Introduction

Does this article have anything directly to do with my upcoming novel or its series?

No.

Is it the paper I wrote as a “practice thesis” while in grad school—and the source of the research that greatly inspired the Fomorians of Song of the Sidhe?

Yes.

I’ll write a whole different article about Roxi Lovegood, the Fomorians, and how/why their whole arc connects to the very real Sea Peoples of our very real ancient history because it’s definitely a fascinating topic I think we don’t look at closely enough. Since I’m planning on seeing the new Christopher Nolan film, The Odyssey, this coming weekend, I’ll probably be super pumped afterwards and smash out a whole thesis on Pages to publish in here.

The reason why I’m sharing a college paper in the middle of fine-tuning edits and revisions for the upcoming third installment of my series, Queen of Night, is twofold:

1. People asked for it after I posted my personal favorite observation/theory around the aftermath of the Trojan War (asked, demanded, same thing!)

2. When I finally dug it up out of my archives and read it again after almost a decade of shoving it away (professor’s feedback was not…encouraging…), I was struck by the subconscious parallels I’ve been drawing this entire time between Roxi Lovegood—the main protagonist of Song of the Sidhe—and Klytemnestra.

I swear, it was completely unintentional.

While it still may be a bit too soon to go into great detail of how/why/where those parallels are (no spoilers, I promise!), I think it’s safe to say for the readers just now discovering the first book, Ithandryll, that a strong sense of injustice clings to Roxi even as she pushes forward to live her best life despite everything she left behind as of Page One, Paragraph One, Chapter One.

Those who wronged her got away with it.

The crimes committed against her were shrugged off by those who should have sided with her.

She’s expected to shake it off, move on, let it go.

Even though the nightmares persist, the pain still throbs in her soul, and she’s forced to struggle to survive while the man who made her life a living hell is out there skippideedoodaa-ing around without a care in the world.

Why should he care? No one ever held him accountable.

These are the exact same conditions the character, the person, of Klytemnestra had to endure throughout the entirety of her adulthood.

The man who murdered her husband and children, then stole her away and forced her into a new marriage—to himself—got away with it. No one held him accountable for his crimes. No one stopped him or chastised him when he sacrificed their daughter to the gods “for favorable winds”.

Read that again: he murdered his own child not for success at retrieving his wayward sister-in-law or victory over the Trojan military forces.

Favorable winds.

Klytemnestra was expected to endure her grief quietly, privately, but ultimately shake it off by the time Agamemnon returned 10 years later because “it’s all in the past”.

Move on, let it go, and celebrate the return of the man who slaughtered your whole family who’s now brought home a captive slave to be his new mistress.

It’s fine.

Everything’s fine.

*Eye twitch*

Just as I did not expect to find so many connections between different parts of the world while chugging Mountain Dew Code Red at 2AM with five books open simultaneously across a table—sticky notes everywhere—I definitely did not expect to discover (or perhaps rediscover?) so many connections between who some historians have titled “The World’s First Axe Murderer”, the kickass-but-vulnerable main protagonist of my award-winning modern epic romantasy…and myself.

Which ultimately brings me back around to why I think it’s important we look at, discover, and remember Klytemnestra: I’m not reaching for my Minoan battle axe and neither should you be, but I think we can agree that we understand her. In so many ways (especially if you’re a woman), we are her. We know what it is to silently grieve when the world demands we rejoice; we know how it feels to be gaslit into acting like—or even believe—that those who committed heinous crimes against us did nothing wrong. “That’s just who they are.”

And hey, there’s a bonus to reading my caffeine-fueled, half-shod attempt at figuring out how to write a thesis:

You’ll get the deep lore behind Agamemnon that the movie doesn’t cover but 100% will make you go, “OOOOOHHHHHhhhh… Okay, yeah. He kinda makes sense now.”

{Bibliography is at the bottom; I couldn’t figure out how to use footnotes on this platform.}

“How long will you hide
oh queen of the night?
How long will you shudder
when you should fight?”

The third book in the award-winning modern epic romantasy series is around the corner—and right now is the perfect time to join the official Advance Reader Copy (ARC) team!

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Klytemnestra: Motherhood, Murder, and the Birth of the Judicial Court

Centuries after Homer wrote The Iliad and The Odyssey, an Eleusian warrior and playwright by the name of Aeschylus wrote over seventy plays of which only seven survive today. Three detailed the accounts of Agamemnon and the aftermath of the Trojan War. This particular trilogy, The Oresteia, followed the oral traditions of Athens, Sparta, and their tribal predecessors of Mycenae in retelling the story of Agamemnon’s wife, Klytemnestra, and the tragedies that drove her to brutally murder the king of Mycenae the same day he returned from Troy.

Given the long expanse of time between Aeschylus’ life and the events of the Mycenaean empire, Klytemnestra has long been classified as a mythological character utilized in ancient and modern literature to embody both cold-blooded matricide and the plights of women trapped in cycles of abuse and misuse by men of power. She is both villain and hero, conniving and suffering, and interpretations of her actions have varied between male and female perspectives in literary analysis.

Yet the question remains: was Klytemnestra real? Did Agamemnon, of whom archaeologists have found much by way of tangible evidence, truly have a wife who murdered him in his own bath? Or was he killed during a feast at the hands of Klytemnestra’s lover, like Homer originally portrayed in The Odyssey? And in the face of scandal such as initial archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann was over his findings at Mycenae, what does the archaeological record truly say?

Whatever the specifics of Klytemnestra may be, there is no contention over the impact of her life—and death—on the structure of the Athenian court of law. A system of testimony, judicial delegation, prosecution and defense, exampled by both mythological and historical characters in Oresteia, developed out of Aeschylus’ writings to form the same legal system that exists today in the United States of America and other Western nations. It is important, then, to not only examine the cultural interpretations of the woman, wife, and mother that was Klytemnestra, but also to investigate the reality of her existence in ancient history.

Through reviewing the mythos surrounding Klytemnestra and Agamemnon, the life and political atmosphere of Aeschylus in Athens, archaeological sites and evidence, the weapon(s) used by Klytemnestra, and the overarching purpose of her story, one may find the keys to understanding the complexity of the woman who not only inspired the formation of modern court, but acted as a catalyst to the ultimate downfall of Mycenae.

The Mythos of Klytemnestra and the House of Atreus

The founder of the House of Atreus was Tantalus, king of Phrygia, who wed Dione, daughter of Atlas, and through her fathered two sons, Pelops and Broteus, and one daughter, Niobe. Myth traditions in the region of Phrygia center on Tantalus and Niobe, citing Tantalus’ crimes as the cause for the earthquakes and chasms that destroyed the city of Tantalis. Diodorus places Tantalus’ dominion over the area between Sipylus and Ida.

According to legend, Tantalus was invited to dine with the gods and—in an effort to honor them—sacrificed Pelops with his own hand. He then boiled his own child’s flesh and served it as a meal to the gods, who quickly realized what had transpired and refused to eat the meat.

All except Demeter, who was so distraught over the loss of her daughter Persephone that she did not pay much attention and accidentally nibbled on a piece of Pelop’s shoulder.

The gods gathered the pieces of Pelops and restored him to life. As punishment they threw Tantalus into Tartarus and cursed him to hunger and thirst for all eternity. No matter how close to food or water he could get, the waters would recede and the food lay just barely beyond his fingertips. Relief would forever be out of reach.

Pelops grew and married Hippodameia, with whom he fathered two sons: Atreus and Thyestes. The brothers became rivals in adulthood; after banishing Thyestes for seducing his wife and attempting to claim the throne, Atreus invited him back for a feast of reconciliation. The main course was Thyestes’ own sons, cut up and boiled in a similar fashion as Tantalus had done with Pelops. In a rage, Thyestes cursed Atreus’ house to be “self-devouring” and fled.

During his exile, Thyestes sought an oracle for advice on how to wreak vengeance on his brother, and was told that a son by his daughter Pelopia would grow up to kill Atreus. On a night when Pelopia performed an animal sacrifice to the gods, Thyestes attacked, raped and impregnated her as she bathed in the river. Ashamed of what happened, she abandoned her newborn in a field, where he survived by suckling from a goat until he was found by local shepherds and named Aegisthus (which means, “male goat”). The shepherds took the infant to Atreus, where he was welcomed and raised as one of the king’s own sons. No one recognized the true family relations between them or Atreus’ new wife, the very same Pelopia. She gave Aegisthus the sword of her rapist, which she had managed to steal during the attack in order to later identify the man.

When Atreus’ sons Agamemnon and Menelaus captured Thyestes, Aegisthus was sent to deliver the execution. Thyestes immediately recognized his own sword and asked where the young man found it; when Pelopia was questioned, she realized her rapist was her own father. Overcome with agony and despair, she threw herself upon his sword and died. Aegisthus turned away from Thyestes and instead killed Atreus, then claimed for himself and his father the land and titles that they had lost during Thyestes’ exile. Father and son jointly ruled over Mycenae and sent Agamemnon and Menelaus into exile to Sparta, where the House of Tyndareus welcomed them.

Tyndareus was the son of Oebalus and Gorgophone, and the king of Sparta. He married Leda, the princess of Aetolia, and with her had seven children: Castor, Klytemnestra, Timandra, Phoebe, Philonoe, Helen, and Pollux. Helen and Pollux were suspected to be the children of Zeus, who had disguised himself as a swan and seduced Leda.

NOTE: Some oral traditions claim all of Leda’s children to be Zeus’, while other traditions claim half came from Tyndareus. All versions include the laying of eggs from which children emerge, whether just Helen and Pollux from one egg, or all the children born from two eggs.

During a sacrifice to the gods, Tyndareus forgot to include Aphrodite in his worship. As punishment, the goddess cursed his daughters to be wed multiple times and obtain the reputation of husband-abandoners, despite whatever circumstances may have existed to cause the betrayals and remarriages. Timandra was the first daughter to leave her husband, Echemus king of Arcadia, for Phyleus king of Dulichium.

Mythos traditions do not give a specific reason for Timandra’s infidelity, unlike her sisters.

Agamemnon and Menelaus were guests of Tyndareus for many years, and when his daughters were of age, Helen was given to Menelaus in marriage. Klytemnestra married Tantalus II, son of Broteas, and with him bore a son. Soon after this, Agamemnon murdered Tantalus II and the infant, took Klytemnestra for his wife, and returned to Mycenae where he swiftly regained the throne and established himself as king. After this time, he fathered with Klytemnestra Iphigenia, Electra, Orestes, and Chrysothemis. When Helen left Menelaus for Paris of Troy, Agamemnon gathered the armies of Mycenae and started the campaign against Troy to avenge his brother’s honor.

Before departing from a port in Boeotia, Agamemnon somehow offended the goddess Artemis and incurred her wrath. Sources are unclear as to what specific action caused the offense towards Artemis, only that she was displeased by Agamemnon’s greed and violent ambition on the whole. Plague, lack of wind, and other misfortunes drove Agamemnon to desperation, and at the advice of the oracle Calchas, he sacrificed his daughter Iphigenia to Artemis (according to the accounts found in Cypria, part of the Epic Cycle which chronicles the Trojan War). Misfortunes eased, and the Mycenaeans could finally leave Boeotia for the shores of Troy.

While Agamemnon was away at war for over a decade, Klytemnestra took as her lover Aegisthus, the very same son of Thyestes. Upon his return from Troy, Agamemnon easily dismissed Aegisthus and assumed his wife was overjoyed to welcome him home, even as he brought in his Trojan captive and new mistress, the seer and Trojan princess Cassandra. Despite Klytemnestra’s covert attempts to lure Agamemnon into dishonoring himself in front of his men and the gods, his own hubris prevented the mishaps.

In one such instance, Klytemnestra had purple linens—the fabric of the gods—unrolled at Agamemnon’s feet upon his return from Troy and urged him to step on them. Had he done so, he would have disgraced himself in front of his subjects and angered the gods, lending more sympathy to his impending death. Instead, Agamemnon laughed at her lavishment and stepped around them in a move meant to equate himself with his surviving warriors of the war.

Cassandra envisioned what was about to happen and warned Klytemnestra of the consequences, but the queen ignored her and made her work as a servant in the royal house.

While Agamemnon bathed in his chambers, Klytemnestra threw a blanket over him to entangle his limbs in the water and prevent his escape. She then stabbed—or hacked—him to death. She murdered Cassandra as well, then married Aegisthus to jointly rule over Mycenae.

(This version of the arrival and murder of Agamemnon is from Aeschylus’ The Oresteia; a slightly different version such as that found in Sophocles’ Elektra depicts Aegisthus aiding Klytemnestra in the murder, and a net is used instead of a blanket.)

Despite his love for his mother, Orestes felt troubled by the murder of his father and subsequently killed Klytemnestra. Aeschylus’ account in Oresteia describes Orestes enlisting the help of his sister, Elektra, and his friend, Pylades, to carry out the murders at the order of the Oracle at Delphi.

He also killed Aegisthus and any children born between the couple. Variations between Aeschylus, Sophocles, and other versions indicate at least one possible child, and up to three or four.

This act only heightened Orestes’ guilt over the crimes of his family, and he fled to Delphi where he was constantly plagued by the torments of his mother’s erinyes (an ancient goddess of vengeance, most often in relation to familial crimes; in some uses the word refers to a person’s “vengeful spirit/ghost” and is also interchangeable with Fury/Furies). When protection could not be found at the temple of Delphi, he moved on to Athens, where the goddess Athena received him on the acropolis and held a trial for him before twelve judges, with herself included among them. Since Orestes had apparently acted upon the orders of Apollo and delivered justice for murder, he was acquitted and freed from his tormentors.

Weapon of Choice

An interesting area of study in Klytemnestra’s murder of Agamemnon has been that of her weapon of choice: was it a sword or an axe?

Literary analysis examines this as an artistic choice between a phallic symbol (the sword) and a weapon traditionally used by women in Minoa and Mycenae (the axe). Feminist historian Barbara Walker theorized that the double-headed axe, or labrys, was a weapon used as a scepter by the Amazonian goddess Rhea until male priesthoods overran the citadel at Delphi and shifted the image of the axe from female to male iconography. Anthropologist Marija Gimbutas “connects the labrys to the shape of the butterfly (and the bee), which figured the female capacity for (re)generation”. This would suggest not only Klytemnestra’s proclivity towards using the labrys out of heritage and habit, but also hints at the remnants of Minoan culture which still existed in Mycenae—a culture that, other feminist historians argue, could have been largely matriarchal instead of patriarchal as was previously assumed.

Other aspects of Klytemnestra’s vengeance upon her husband point out Aeschylus’ likening Agamemnon to animal imageries heavily attributed to Minoan culture: a bull “struggling in the net…connected with a sacrificial ritual, a bull-sacrifice”, and a snake whose “head is the most natural and obvious part…at which to aim a blow”. In the first play of Aeschylus’ trilogy, Agamemnon, Klytemnestra described her methods as using both weapons to deliver the fatal blows:

G.C.W. Warr viewed this passage as a clearly marked confession to changing weapons mid-attack: Klytemnestra “first cut him down with two blows of the axe falling on the head, which was an easy mark; then, when he was down and at her mercy, she finished him with one thrust of the sword of Aegisthus”.

Significant as well is the total exclusion of the sword in the accounts written by Sophocles and Euripides, who instead adhered to the traditional use of the labrys both as a nod to previous versions and, quite possibly, to underline the importance of Minoan heritage in the Mycenaean past. Whether intentional or not, this constant referral to Minoa also underlines the seize of power Klytemnestra took as the woman of her household, using the feminine labrys to cut down the murderer of her first husband and two of her children when no other justice was in sight.

It was this idea which Klytemnestra used as her defense when confronted by the Chorus, reminding them that while she would be held accountable for her actions against Agamemnon, no one held the king of Mycenae accountable for the blood of their daughter on his hands:

It seems fitting for Klytemnestra, a woman whose anger burned against Agamemnon for sacrificing Iphigenia like livestock, to kill him in the manner typically utilized for capturing and butchering cattle—doubling insult to injury by conducting the murder at Agamemnon’s most vulnerable point of the day.

Homer even inferred such emasculation in The Odyssey, whose Agamemnon recounted a very different and public version of his death to Odysseus during the latter’s journey through the Underworld: “The great king is slaughtered side by side with his etaipoi… Homer characteristically gives Agamemnon as heroic a death as is possible and eschews the frightening, sordid, and doubtless original tradition of the helpless unarmed king struck down in his bath”.

Homer also inferences the death of Agamemnon to be at the hands of Aegisthus, a man, rather than his wife.

In this scenario, it is Aegisthus who personally delivers the fatal blow and in public view where Agamemnon stood a chance to fight back or gather defensive forces. (In Aeschylus’ version, as well as several other versions of the story, Aegisthus is either noticeably absent from the scene or passively helps Klytemnestra restrain Agamemnon.)

That a woman caught him naked and vulnerable in his bath, literally and figuratively with her net, then hacked into him with her own furious strength, first with axe and then with sword, is not something one king would readily admit to another. Instead of admitting his own faults and grievous errors made in life, Agamemnon simply warned Odysseus of the dangers of treacherous women.

Aeschylus, Athens, and the Oresteia

The tragic poet Aeschylus wrote the vast majority of what is known about Klytemnestra in his play, The Oresteia, with subsequent accounts by later authors built upon Aeschylus’ work (or at least heavily referenced to it).

Born in 525 BCE in Eleusis, he was the son of Euphorion and one of five children in the household. Life, the prefix to the Medicean manuscript of Aeschylus’ plays, states that he and his brother Cynegeirus fought against the Persians in the battle of Marathon, alongside his youngest brother Ameinias in the battle of Salamis, and later in the land battle of Plataea.

While writing his plays after the Persian War, Aeschylus divided his time and living arrangements between Athens and Sicily, ultimately abandoning Athens altogether to permanently reside in the Sicilian neighborhood of Gela until his death in 456/455 BCE at the age of sixty-nine. The noted cause of death, according to Life, was “a falling tortoise which an eagle had dropped on his head.”

According to Aristophanes, “Aeschylus did not get along with the Athenians,” but no specific reason was referenced.

Multiple versions of the legend of Orestes existed during Aeschylus’ time, focused primarily on the suffering of Orestes at the hands of the Erinyes until his eventual release from their persecution. One version described Orestes as “gnawing away one of his fingers” and offering some of his hair to the Erinyes, which was supported by Spartans who “procured an Oracle from Delphi authorizing the removal of Orestes’ bones from Tegea to Sparta” so they could reinforce their “claim to the political hegemony of the Peloponnese”.

For this reason, it is believed that Aeschylus designed the trial of Orestes to encompass Athenian ideals of law and order, while creating the concepts of prosecutor, jury, and testimony as a template for Athenian court structure—his version illustrated Athenian ideology as more civilized than that of the aggressive Spartans. “Thus, as he tells it, the story of Orestes is a stratified piece of social history embodying the accumulated deposits of the primitive tribe, the early monarchy, aristocracy and democracy.”

The trial of Orestes itself has been suspected of acting as propaganda for Aeschylus’ views on contemporary social issues, such as the persecution of the Alcmeonids and their attempts to prove purification via Delphi. This viewpoint, however, has come under strong criticisms which point out that if this were so, then Aeschylus was “whitewashing” Pericles, who at the time—and later during the Peloponnesian War—was under heavy criticism by Sparta for being connected to the Alcmeonids through his mother’s side (the Alcmeonids had negotiated an alliance with Persia during the war, bringing upon the clan a curse from the polis of Athens as a whole).

The idea of innocence despite maternal lineage was emphasized by both Apollo and Athena, the former explaining that “the mother is not the child’s parent, but merely the nurse of the seed”, followed by Athena’s echo of this sentiment in her vote for Orestes:

NOTE: Criticisms of this theory rest on the assumption that Pericles’ familial connections did not become an issue until twenty-five years after The Oresteia was written.

Regardless of the relationship between The Oresteia and Pericles of the Alcmeonids, the trial of Orestes and the vote of Athena provide an accurate portrayal of the rights—or lack thereof—Athenian women possessed in their polis in stark contrast to the many rights Spartan women enjoyed. The only champions of Klytemnestra to appear are the Erinyes, who speak for her position and value as a mother.

Apollo, who ordered Orestes to avenge his father, comes to odds with the Erinyes due to his stance on the preservation and honor of family despite his insistence on Klytemnestra’s execution. This exchange between gods and Furies resembles in no small way the exchange between prosecution and defense, two sides of advocacy within a judicial court.

Apollo insists that the severity of Klytemnestra’s crime rests upon her killing not only Agamemnon the king, but Agamemnon the man, effectively emasculating him and effeminizing him through her use of cloth to entangle him and subjugate him to her will; the labrys to cut him down with the weapon once associated with the goddesses of the Amazons; and the sword to deliver the final, fatal blow in a way Klytemnestra herself described with a hint of double-entendre.

Contrary to the “butterfly” shape of the labrys, the sword is phallic and therefore violates Agamemnon’s body, both physically and by belonging to his wife’s lover.

Athena’s role in the trial of Orestes is important not just as a goddess or daughter of Zeus, but as the woman Klytemnestra is unable to be: free of marital obligations and free to fight in battle alongside men, her masculine mind openly accepted while Klytemnestra’s was condemned.

Fun Fact: It is possible that Aesychlus’ portrayal of a masculine-minded woman such as Klytemnestra may have been inspired, in part, by his experience in battle against Artemisia at Salamis.

This allowed the people of Athens to justify their rather hypocritical stance on the suppression of women’s rights while worshipping a goddess: even as a woman with more liberties and power, Athena honors the position of her father as master, and understands the relationship between father and child much better than that between mother and child. Athena also counteracts Apollo’s obsolete code of blood-feud with a more updated, and much-needed, method for weighing justice in the matters of death:

“The dilemma which faced Orestes could only be escaped by the establishment of a court of law to try cases of homicide. The divided vote seems to recognize this fact; and the jurors who returned this verdict were, in fact, those Athenians who are represented as at once the pioneers and beneficiaries of the new order.”

It is here, again, the contrast between tribal concepts of justice and the more modern concepts of democracy is stark. Aeschylus was a Pythagorean, “closer to Hippokrates than to Plato”, and infused his ideology into the dialogues of Apollo and Athena.

In his support of handling family strife internally, Apollo unwittingly acts as a representation of the primitive bloodbath tribal structures experienced before the formation of the polis—one only needed to reflect upon the violent ancestry of Agamemnon to see this correlation. Athena, in her formation of the court and delegation of judicial powers to eleven mortals, acts as a representation of the better, more civilized methods of democracy still new to the polis.

Klytemnestra, then, was a victim of an obsolete world while her son Orestes was liberated by the new order.

Klytemnestra in Archaeology

Controversial archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann was one of the first contemporary researchers to ascribe one of the tholos tombs at Mycenae to Klytemnestra. He utilized the records of classical Greek geographer Pausanias, whose own visit to Mycenae raised the question of Agamemnon and Klytemnestra’s final resting place, to determine the most probable tomb for the disgraced queen of Mycenae:

“What he says about the tombs of Agamemnon and his companions killed by Aegisthos and Klytemnestra can leave no doubt in any body’s mind that he saw all the tombs in and not outside the acropolis.”

—August 27, 1876

This suggests that Klytemnestra’s tomb would be located outside the center of Mycenaean culture, a burial honoring a queen and mother while shaming a murderess and usurper. According to twentieth-century archaeologist David Mason, in absence of identifiable human remains, dating the Tomb of Klytemnestra was possible by cross-referencing “pottery closely associated with structural elements of the tomb”, which established the tomb’s construction in the early thirteenth century BCE.

In contrast to the desecrated tholos of Klytemnestra, the Tomb of Agamemnon found within the citadel area of Mycenae (shaft grave V) contained human remains as well as valuable artifacts, most notably the long-debated “mask of Agamemnon”.

At least three of these masks exist, but Burial Mask NM 624 is the one assumed to be that of Agamemnon to which Schliemann referred in his notes.

These findings helped discredited, or at least cast doubt upon, the idea that the Tomb of Klytemnestra was not hers at all but rather belonged to Agamemnon. Shaft grave V, being within the citadel walls and considerably untouched by grave robbers, seemed a more plausible location for the king’s burial to archaeologists in its indication of respect shown by citizens of the area. Klytemnestra may have been buried in a tomb like a queen, but even in death she was outcast and ravaged until all that remains today is a series of pottery.

An updated estimation from the previously assumed a late fourteenth-century BCE construction date, this was posited by archaeologists George Mylonas and John Papademetriou in 1952.

Both Mylonas and Papadimitriou highly criticized the research of Schliemann and relied more on the research of Sir Arthur Evans on the Minoan civilization in Crete to cross-reference the artifacts found in the shaft graves of Mycenae. They also expressed sincere doubt that the tholos tombs discovered outside the citadel actually belonged to Klytemnestra and Aegisthus: “Of course we now know that neither group can be attributed to those legendary figures, for both antedate the Trojan era by a number of centuries”.

Excavations at Hisarlik in Anatolia have also acted as a cross-reference point in determining the validity of the Tomb of Klytemnestra via dating the Trojan War. Schliemann originally estimated out of nine occupation levels unearthed at Hisarlik, level II was that of the Trojan War and belonged to the Early Bronze Age; his associate, Wilhelm Dorpfeld, disagreed and later convinced Schliemann of the error. After further investigation into the other layers of the mound, and much cross-referencing to Homer, Herodotus, and Hittite texts which detailed encounters with the Mycenaean:

“We can with a high degree of probability identify the site now known as Hisarlik in northwestern Turkey with…Troy… Level VIh of this site best fits Homer’s description of Troy. This level was destroyed some time during the thirteenth century, probably around the middle of the century, within the period to which the Trojan War is dated in Classical Greek sources.”

Research continues today in the search for exact dating and event correlation between the Trojan War and the occupants of the tholos tombs in Mycenae, so the answer to Klytemnestra’s existence may yet be revealed. By cross-referencing what archaeologists do have, such as the death masks of grave V in Mycenae and the pottery in the Tomb of Klytemnestra, as well as the ever-growing knowledge and understanding of Minoan culture via research in Crete, solidifying Klytemnestra’s place in Greek history as a real woman will eventually become easier.

(In)Conclusive Evidence?

Klytemnestra served as the backdrop by which Orestes’ actions were laid bare before his prosecutors, the Erinyes, through the memories and retellings of Spartans and Athenians alike until Aeschylus used his writings to examine the true intentions behind the matricide. This explanation of self-induced justice against the murderer within her family in the absence of a court further underlined the importance of such a construct needed within Athenian government during the political reforms which stripped the courts of all function except jurisdiction over homicide.

Aeschylus therefore utilized the power and influence of the goddess Athena, who successfully formed the first court of law to try Orestes for the death of Klytemnestra, to remind Athenian politicians not only the reason why they held court, but under whose authority they still answered to.

And, in a covert way, Aeschylus brought to public attention the quiet suffering of women in households who held no power, such as it was in Athens, and the possible consequences that would befall the men who dared to underestimate the strength and resilience of Spartan women.

The Final Verdict

The question of Klytemnestra’s real-life existence remains in debate among scholars, with some reference to Herodotus’ dismissal of Aeschylus as a poet with Panhellenic respectability. Herodotus used a patronymic (“son of Euphorion”), implying Aeschylus may not be easily recognized or remembered.

Others point to the estimated distance of time between the Tomb of Klytemnestra and the Trojan layer at Hisarlik as indication of the impossible relations between her and Agamemnon, should she have existed at all in Mycenae. The absence of human remains within the Tomb of Klytemnestra further frustrates archaeological efforts to solidify the identity of the original occupant of the tholos, but analysis of surrounding bodies found in the other shaft graves may provide clues as to where the final resting place of Klytemnestra may have been, or still may be.

Ultimately, Klytemnestra’s proof of existence in Mycenae relies not solely on archaeological record, but in the immense impact her life and actions had on her household, her kingdom, and the future of Greece. Embedded so deeply into the minds and memories of Grecian scholars, poets, and politicians, it would be difficult to wholly dismiss Klytemnestra as nothing more than a mythological figure.

My Personal Final Thoughts

After nearly a decade since writing this paper, my composition style has evolved out of academia to return to the creative, which was a struggle for me from the first paper I wrote for a college course all the way back in 2007. I wrote “too fluffy” and “too illustrative” for Serious Academics, which felt like a death sentence for my then-aspirations of becoming a professor in archaeological anthropology.

That being said, Current Nikki is very upset with Past Nikki at the blunt ending. Editor Nikki is side-eyeing Tired College Student Nikki for shoving heavy research into maybe a week’s worth of writing and leaving out the best bits because it was almost 3AM and the library was closing and the paper was due in a few hours.

Author Nikki is marginally less upset with the irate professor’s scathing red ink comments even if he still could have been a bit nicer in his criticisms.

If there’s anything I want you to take from this article and paper, it’s this:

Evidence of fact isn’t always found in bones or stones. Sometimes the best evidence, the only evidence that remains after centuries of rising and falling and languages shifting, are the stories seared into our minds and embedded in the mortar of foundations we continue to build our civilizations on.

Bibliography

Aeschylus. “Agamemnon”, in The Oresteia, edited and translated by Ted Hughes. New York: The Estate of Ted Hughes, 1999.

Bryce, Trevor R. “The Trojan War: Is There Truth behind the Legend?” in Near Eastern Archaeology, Vol. 65, No. 3 (2002), pp. 182-195.

Davies, Malcolm. “Aeschylus’ Klytemnestra: Sword or Axe?” in The Classical Quarterly, Vol. 37, No. 1 (1987), pp. 65-75.

Dickenson, Oliver. “The ‘Face of Agamemnon’”, in Hesperia, Vol. 74, Issue 3 (2005), pp. 299-308

Komar, Kathleen L. Reclaiming Klytemnestra. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2003.

Mason, David J. “The Date of the Tomb of Klytemnestra”, The Annual of the British School at Athens, Vol. 108 (2013), pp. 97-119.

Mylonas, George E. and Papademetriou. “The New Shaft Graves of Mycenae” in Archaeology, Vol. 5, No. 4 (1952), pp. 194-200.

Perrot, Georges; Chipiez, Charles. History of Art in Phrygia, Lydia, Caria, and Lycia: From the French of Georges Perrot and Charles Chipiez, New York: Chapman and Hall, 1892.

Podlecki, Anthony J. The Political Background of Aeschylean Tragedy. Scranton: University of Michigan, 1966.

Schliemann, Heinrich. “The Mycenaean Diary”, in Myth, Scandal and History, edited by William M. Calder III and David A. Traill. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1986.

Shrimpton, Gordon S. History and Memory in Ancient Greece. Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1997.

Thomson, George. Aeschylus and Athens. New York: Haskell House Publishers, 1967.

Warr, G.C.W. “Klytemnestra’s Weapon”, in The Classical Review, Vol. 12, No. 7 (1898), pp. 348-350.

Winnington-Ingram, R.P. “Klytemnestra and the Vote of Athena”, in The Journal of Hellenistic Studies, Vol. 68 (1948), pp. 130-147.

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Author’s Note

One of the biggest challenges in writing fantasy is not the breadth of the worldbuild—but the depth of the characters within it.

Alexander Rionnaghan is one such “side character”: the only known surviving son and heir of the ruthless (and now exiled) king of the Tuatha Dé Danann, he spent nearly a thousand years trapped in the machinations of those who saw a vacant throne and endless opportunities in it.

He’s a complicated man, forged in the fires of political upheaval and societal fear. The Great Houses held their breath to see if he would be an echo of the tyrant before him—the same kind of tyrant who dared to rip a tear between the Night and Dream Realms for the sake of power.

A daughter of one such Great House decided to find out for herself.

Her name was Siobhan.

And if we’re being honest, that’s exactly the kind of fortitude the kingdom needed in its queen.

It felt like every eye on this side of the forest clearing was on him, a mix of surprise and apprehension on their faces as they watched their crown prince stretch his limbs for An Rása.

He was used to being stared at.

He was also used to ignoring them.

The sky overhead glowed a brilliant cerulean without a single cloud on the horizon. Alexander squinted up at the edges of the sun’s powerful rays and heard himself mutter a prayer in the Old Tongue for Lugh, the god of sun, to light every corner of the long path from here to Baronane.

Belenus, too, if that god considered securing a bride to qualify as a form of healing.

“Can’t say I’m not surprised,” came the deep drawl from one of the high lords standing only an arm’s length away. “We’ve been wondering when they were going to let you out of your cage.”

Alexander straightened. Eyed the young man who must have been from one of the mid-ranking Great Houses—the kind which climbed the social ladder just as easily as they fell off it. He could tell where they landed by the puffed chest and general forced swagger of someone who didn’t actually believe they were as important as they wanted to be seen.

Not that he had much room to talk. He was supposed to be the new king of Ithandryll, the most powerful of all the Tuatha Dé Danann, and yet he’d spent the last countless years screaming through nightmares and questioning if he was worthy enough to live, let alone rule. The High Council had deemed him too unstable to trust with “normal” development after everything that happened with his father. It was easier for them to stunt his growth and lengthen the years from childhood to adolescence so they could step into the throne room and direct the nation as they saw fit, rather than roll the dice and allow the gods to have a say.

Sure, they sent him physicians and counselors and secured his education as a true Rionnaghan for the eventual day of his coronation. They weren’t cruel or neglectful, just…manipulative.

Controlling.

Determined to make sure he understood that they could take his inheritance just as easily as they could grant it.

Until a few weeks ago—when someone new walked into his life with a very convincing offer.

“What’s wrong with that?” Alexander felt his mouth curve into a smirk. “Are you worried I’m going to steal all your women?”

A hush fell over the men. Half of them shifted their weight as if ready to tackle the prince should someone give the signal.

Which made him burst into laughter. “Oh my gods, it was a joke. Do you really think I have that kind of stamina to satisfy a harem? Riordhan sure didn’t.”

Little by little, the men eased. Some even chuckled.

It was progress. That’s what counted. By this time, physically in his early twenties but mentally much, much older, Alexander understood a great many things about navigating the treacherous waters of the High Court, most especially as a Rionnaghan. Most feared him, many respected him, but all around the whole of both Great and Minor Houses braced themselves for any sign that he could be headed in the same direction as his father. The philandering, the squandering, the conquering…the genocide…

As if their own predecessors hadn’t given Riordhan’s father and grandfather carte blanche to do whatever the hell they liked.

If they were going to move into a better future together as a people, Alexander needed them to not only see, but believe he was different from his father. That he knew how to discern between what he wanted for himself and what was good for the kingdom. For the realm.

Making jokes at the blind exile’s expense was certainly one of the easier tactics to employ.

Securing a wife, however?

He squinted across the clearing to skim through the lovely faces of the women gathered there. Some of them seemed genuinely excited, while others looked nervous and downright terrified.

The one he was searching for picked at a hangnail, casually reclined against a large oak tree. When she moved to bite it off, her eyes met his and he swore something delightfully mischievous twinkled in those sapphires. She didn’t seem particularly eager for The Race to begin, but she wasn’t cowering behind the tree like several of her friends tried to do. Instead, she wiped her hand on her dress, stretched her elegant arms over her head, then began braiding her beautiful white gold hair into a plait Alexander could tell was meant to keep her tresses controlled.

Oh, she was preparing to give him a chase.

His smirk broadened into a grin. His heart skipped a beat and other parts of his body tightened in a different kind of preparation—not just for the pursuit, but for the victory after.

The horn gave a short warning blast. Men and women lined up in their respective sections, sending out a few wolf calls and catty taunts to stir up the blood.

Alexander tried not to seem too excited as he sauntered up to the front row; he decided that making a sensual show of peeling off his tunic would be distracting enough that no one would notice the way his stupid heart kept hammering against his rib cage. It did require shouldering through a couple of high lords who glared at him over the intrusion, but he did not care. They’d get their bounty regardless or they’d try again next year.

As for him and his beauty?

They weren’t going to wait for the next day, let alone the next year.

She eyed his bare torso with a sweet little lick of her lips. Then blew him a kiss.

The guard in the high tower blew the horn.

If any of the other men had doubted Alexander Rionnaghan’s ability to “keep up” after years of confinement, those thoughts dissolved in the wake of his impressive sprint across the clearing. He reached the trees before any of them and wasted no time darting through the thicket after the woman who shrieked with laughter and made a quick escape deep into the forest.

Some of the screams that gradually rose around him weren’t of the happy kind.

Stay focused.

Everyone understood the ramifications of the ritual. It was why so many of them tried to “pair up” before the annual race instead of running without prospects, because it made the event something like a blessed and fun mating ritual if one already knew who they planned to catch or be caught by. The only other option was to pray to the gods and roll the dice—or allow the deeper, more primal urges out at the expense of those who never wanted to participate in the first place.

Not your problem.

He had to keep going. He couldn’t afford to stop now, even as the shouts and screams and pleas for mercy pierced the air from several of the young women who he knew he was meant to protect as their future king. This was not the sort of thing he was allowed to interfere with. The laws which governed An Rása superceded even his regal might, and interference would mean harsh punishments for everyone involved, including him.

He shook off the guilt. Shoved what remained deep down where he kept all the other shadows from his life buried.

Not your situation.

A flash of white gold caught his eye far ahead and off to the left. Alexander followed it, noting along the way how the sounds of the others faded into the trees behind him and a blessed sort of silence opened up before him.

White linen fluttered in the gentle breeze. A piece of her dress intentionally “snagged” on a branch untouched by her running.

He plucked the fabric from the tree and held it to his nose. It smelled like her. Clean and soft, like a field of snowdrop blossoms after the first thaw. Again that sweet tension tightened in his body and made his senses sharper, clearer, and perfectly honed on his beautiful prey—

The next step slid the ground out from under him. One moment he stood upright, the next he felt that same ground slam into his back while the canopy of trees spun in his vision.

A peal of laughter trickled down from somewhere up in that canopy.

“Ow.” Alexander meant to say something else, but that was the only sound his winded lungs could manage at the moment.

“Awww, is the widdle baby gonna cry?”

He squinted. Where was she? “I don’t cry.”

“But you admit to being an infant.”

“Careful, my lady.” Even as he drawled the warning, he heard the touch of amusement in it as much as she probably did. “I wouldn’t be so quick to sling insults at your future king, if I were you.”

“Pulling rank now, are we?” The eye roll infused itself through her voice. Which was closer now, if the fall hadn’t disoriented his hearing, too. “Tsk tsk, Your Highness. I wouldn’t be laying down on the job since that title means so much, ‘if I were you’.”

With a low and playful growl, Alexander rolled back onto his feet, expecting to see her standing nearby if not next to him. But to his surprise, she was nowhere to be seen.

At all.

“Siobhan?” He slowly turned. “Where are you?”

Frost crystallized on the tips of ferns to his right, forming a trail that appeared while he watched.

So she loves games. He felt that self-satisfied smirk reappear. Good to know.

“How long will you hide

oh queen of the night?
How long will you shudder

when you should fight?”

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Of course, he already knew she played the games of the High Court with expert precision and in a way that honestly made him a little envious the day they met. While milling around the solarium of House Borelinus’ estate among the other high lords and ladies, all waiting for the announcement that the feast hall was ready for seating, Alexander had overheard the tail end of some lame insult a young lady flung—along with her wine—at a rival’s bodice. That rival swiped a finger through the bubbling liquid dripping down her cleavage, sucked that same finger clean, then remarked at how the lady’s taste in wine was as terrible as her aim.

Up until that point, Alexander had snorted with disgust at the idea of “love at first sight”.

He did not expect the universe to snap into place.

For the peace to suddenly settle around him, quieting everyone’s voice except that of Lady Siobhan of House Deighear.

He also did not expect her to meet his gaze, her eyes to widen, her elegant cheekbones to suddenly flush, or for her to spin on her heel and duck out of sight.

What followed was an exhilarating tango neither of them could avoid once the feast hall doors opened and everyone ushered in to find their assigned seats. Of course the Fates placed them directly across the long table from each other and ignited the banter and periodic, pointed avoidance for the following two hours of dignitaries and pleasantries. Siobhan proved herself to be as sharp in tongue as in wit, much to her parents’ obvious chagrin.

She also proved to be far more delicious than the dessert their hosts offered after the wine flowed freely and guests spilled out into the manicured gardens.

Her breathless voice wove through his memory as he now followed the frosted trail of ferns.

“If you can catch me, you can have me. Completely.”

Nothing else mattered to Alexander after that night. Not “the plan” his well-meaning tutors had instilled in him since childhood. Not the machinations of high lords who sought to continue that same childhood well into his adulthood as if he was some gods-touched simpleton too innocent to wear the crown. When he arose that following morning, he rose as a man born into the status long denied him, no longer tolerant of such manipulations. When he strode into the Great Hall and announced his participation in this year’s An Rása, he immediately shut the dissenting high lords up with a stern reminder of what happens when someone double-crosses a Rionnaghan.

He knew he reminded the elders of his father.

He felt it churn in his stomach like a sickness.

But he’d also spotted the blushing smile of a certain golden beauty among the crowd and felt himself swallow back the nausea for her sake.

Everything he did from that night—and morning—onward was for her sake.

Including taking her very own bag of tricks with a laugh, a grin, and a definite trip to the healing baths later on to hopefully heal his pride as much as his sore back.

As he followed the frost through a thicket into what he hoped might be a clearing, Alexander carefully checked the soil before solidifying each step. That black ice earlier was clever. No one would expect such a thing so close to Midsummer. If he found more, he’d catch himself on a bush or branch or maybe even flex a little of his own power just to preserve his dignity.

Rules of The Race be damned, especially when Siobhan obviously felt the same.

The clearing turned out to be a large pond at the base of a small waterfall, tucked out of sight among lush saplings and vines that filled the gaps between trees. Siobhan sat at the top of the waterfall, reclining on a platform formed out of ice and licking a snow cone.

Gods. Alexander would happily watch her soft tongue lap at…anything, really. All day, every day.

Until he grew too jealous of the object of her attention and needed to become her favorite treat.

“Isn’t this a bit off the designated path?” He called up to her, hands braced on his hips in an attempt to look more confident than winded.

“That’s kind of the point!” She called back, not stopping with her snow cone or bothering to glance down at him.

“You do know they’ll come looking for us! If we don’t get back in a decent time, that is.”

“Which we have plenty of. Well,” she rolled on her icy couch and propped her head on her hand, “I do. I can’t speak for you and your climbing skills.”

“My climbing…” Gods above, she was going to make him climb around the waterfall as well as run? And knowing her, she most likely planned to slick every stone and foothold with ice so he’d have to spend hours doing what would take anyone else fifteen minutes.

He could cheat. She sure did. The rules of An Rása included not utilizing one’s gods-given abilities in order to gain any sort of advantage or avoid the intended outcome of the race. Should life and death hang in the balance, of course one was allowed to do whatever they needed to survive. Sometimes a rock slide occurred, or a bird of prey lost its damned mind and tried to pluck up an unsuspecting runner.

Alexander was starting to feel like one such bird. Circling around what he wanted while simultaneously losing his sanity. “May I ask, dearest lady, what I have done to offend you?”

Now she glanced at him. Shrugged a shoulder. Returned to what was left of her treat. “Nothing. But…” She sighed. “Maybe that’s part of the problem.”

“Excuse me?”

Siobhan neatly slid the icicle base between her lips and gave it a long, slow suck. A few droplets trickled down her chin to her elegant neck and Alexander instantly forgot what they were talking about. Why they were there.

What his own name even was.

What was that sound?

Oh. Him. Him and his embarrassing low groan emanating from the ache only his leather breeches could hide. Thank the gods.

She slide the icicle back out, her pillowy-soft lips puckered so deliciously it was impossible to not imagine them doing the same thing to…other…things…attached to his body.

Which must have been her plan all along, because in the next instant she tossed the glistening cone aside, flicked her wrist, and turned the waterfall into a slide she skated down like it was the most natural thing she’d done all day. Down and around the stunned prince, her skirts swirling around her legs to reveal a pair of matching leggings tucked into white leather boots laced up to her thighs.

Alexander knew he should call her out on yet another rule breach. Women were not to wear anything underneath their dresses and skirts. Nothing that could impede the primal mating was allowed for either male or female participants, as the whole point of the ritual was to catch, claim, keep, and propagate. If he wanted, he was in full rights to pin her down and use the hunting knife tucked in his own boot to cut the laces and rip off that supple suede so he could do all of that and more.

But…he was curious.

Wildly turned on, and curious about this rebellious spirit who regarded him with a similar curiosity, if not suspicion and a kind of apprehension he did not want to ever see mar her face when she looked at him.

Something in his chest tugged at him to be honest with himself in the very least.

You care about her, too.

You know you’ll never, ever lift a finger against her.

The image of her struggling under him was enough to make him want to vomit and also murder the very figment of his imagination.

“You’ve been in the palace for a long time.” Siobhan kept circling around him, extending the ice as she skated while allowing the trail behind her to return to its normal flow from waterfall into the pond. “A very long time. Yet you haven’t stepped into your role as Ithandryll’s king. Why is the son of Riordhan Rionnaghan so content with doing nothing?”

“Would you believe me if I said it’s because my father did far too much?”

She tilted her head to one side. Gave the notion some thought. “I suppose that is fair.”

“I strive to be nothing like him.” He turned where he stood, following her so she could see the sincerity in his countenance. “To be a completely different king.”

“So instead of forcing everyone to bend their knees and obey, you allow them to force you into submission?”

Alexander frowned. “Careful, my lady.”

She slid to a stop. Used the ice to land directly in front of him, her chest nearly touching his. “What do you think I am doing? I cannot afford to be otherwise. None of us can.”

Her meaning sank into him like a heavy stone bound to the truths neither of them needed to verbally spell out. His father was infamous throughout the Otherworld for being ruthless, merciless, and endlessly hungry. No amount of wealth or women ever satisfied the cravings which drove the king into the kind of madness only the god of dreams managed to temper back—and even then, Riordhan still managed to be as insufferable as he was blind. It was no secret that half the realm held its breath to see who Alexander would turn out to be. Would he follow in his father’s footsteps?

Or, as this incredible woman blatantly accused, would he go in the opposite direction and become a simpering, useless pawn masquerading as someone worthwhile wearing a fancy hat?

“Maybe I need help.” Alexander relaxed the clench in his jaw and managed a lazy smile. She desired confidence? He’d give it to her. Hell, he’d pipe the Silver Seas into her bath if she voiced the idea. “Maybe I’m being as careful as you. The palace is a den of vipers and you’ve proven yourself to be quite the snake charmer.”

A smirk tugged at the corner of her luscious lips. “Snakes make better belts.”

He laughed. He couldn’t help it. “Well, then! Show me which one you want and I’ll start skinning.”

That earned him a wider smile. A hint of admiration in those sapphire pools he wanted to dive in until he drowned. But Siobhan pulled it back into herself and squared her shoulders. Lightly touched a finger to the center of his chest where the Rionnaghan crest patterned his skin. “And what if I asked you to get rid of this?”

“What?” Alexander stilled. She wouldn’t.

“What if they do?” She stepped closer, studying his face and allowing her gaze to wander over his broad shoulders and impressive pectorals. “What if tomorrow, you are no longer Alexander Rionnaghan, distant son of Oberon and heir to the throne of Ithandryll?”

He caught her slender wrist in his hand. Didn’t squeeze, but also didn’t allow her to think such suggestions were mere child’s play. “Do you know something I do not? What have you heard?”

Siobhan met his hard stare with her own. Then, to his surprise, she softened. “Nothing, Alexander. I only want to know who you are as a man. Not as a prince or a king, but as a person. Are you only what they made you to be? Or have you forged yourself into someone capable of more than just agreements and diplomacy?”

Her questions resonated deep within his soul in a way no one else’s ever had. Not from his teachers, not from his extended family, and certainly not from the high lords and ladies who loved to pepper him with inquiries day after day.

Siobhan Deighear asked of him, and demanded him to answer, the only questions that truly mattered.

“I will answer your interrogation if you answer mine.”

Her eyes narrowed. But also slid to his mouth, much to his inward preening. “Fine. That sounds fair.”

Alexander slid his fingers from her wrist to wrap around her hand, pressing her palm to the warm spot directly over his heart. “What is it to you? Not you, a lady of House Deighear. But you, Siobhan?”

They both heard the way her breath sucked in and caught in her throat.

They both felt the way his heart thrummed against her palm as if to encourage her to hold it.

“I…” Her tongue darted over her parted lips, most likely to moisten her suddenly dry mouth. Alexander swallowed back the moan that threatened to give away his distracting need to taste that sweet tongue and stroke it with his own. She seemed not to notice, or even know, just how much of a delicious distraction she was to him. “I was raised, and trained, under the pretense of possibly becoming the next future queen. From the moment I could walk and form words, I was forged into something that could withstand the complications and challenges of serving my king as his consort, should that be the fate woven for my life.”

That did not surprise him in the least. Most, if not all, daughters of the Great Houses were reared into potential queens on the off-chance that the crown prince might choose them. “But…?” Alexander pressed her hand a bit more, just as he pressed for the thoughts she still withheld from him.

“But I’m not…like…that. And I need you to know as much, before you follow through with any decision you might have made about me. I am not some meek or submissive consort content with smiling and nodding to whatever I’m told to say or do. And I don’t…” She shook her head.

Tried to step away.

He pulled her back into his embrace, still holding her hand while lifting his other to touch the ends of her white gold braid that draped over her shoulder. “Don’t what?”

Her bottom lip trembled. “I don’t want to marry a king. Or a prince. I want to marry my husband. And I need to know if he will…” She looked back up into his myriadic eyes. “If you will love me as your wife. Not just be content with me as your queen. At the end of the day, after the crowns are set aside and the royal robes fall to the floor, who will we be to each other? Will I be simply bearing heirs for your kingdom? Or will we be creating emblems of love forged in true passion?”

Damn it all; tears pricked at his eyes. Brimmed on his lashes before he could do anything to stop him.

But maybe that’s what she needed to see. Maybe it was what they both needed to experience together—Alexander in his rawest form, vulnerable and moved, and utterly entranced by the pure honesty of the woman who intoxicated his waking and sleeping moments every hour of every day since they first met.

Alexander, the man who needed the safe space she offered in her arms. The peace, the ability to stop being a monarch and simply be.

“I have a confession to make,” he muttered with a sigh.

Siobhan stiffened. Nodded once.

He slowly wrapped both his arms around her waist, pulling her as close to him as possible without merging into one being. Not a terrible idea. “It’s really, really very easy for me to find a queen. I’ve been eligible to pick one for…” He scrunched his nose as he pretended to do the calculations. “A while. Let’s just say, ‘a while’.” When she didn’t say anything, only blinked and very obviously refrained from shoving away at the insinuation, he allowed the slow smile to creep along his face. “But that always sounded like a life sentence more horrible than sleeping in the deepest dungeons of Nicotesh. And since Rionnaghans aren’t known for finding soulmates, I’ve been avoiding the many opportunities granted to me to even secretly mate up with whichever pretty thing they’ve shoved my way.”

A brow slowly arched. She didn’t exactly believe him. “I saw the way they protested your announcement for this race.”

“What you saw was a realization settle into those who seek to control our kingdom’s narrative.” He made sure she did not look away. He needed her to feel, not just know, what he was telling her. Confessing to her. “What you heard were the protests of those who realized I wasn’t just chasing after a random bride. I’d found my soulmate. My anamcara. And that is a powerful, dangerous thing to anyone who wishes to keep me under their heel.”

For the first time since they met all those weeks ago, Siobhan genuinely appeared shocked. Certainly at a loss for words.

He gently rubbed a hand over the small of her back. “Can you tell me you did not feel the same? That moment our eyes met, those few precious seconds of peace and rightness in the universe? Like everything we’ve ever endured on our own suddenly clicked together and made sense amidst the chaos?”

Now it was her turn to blink back tears. “I…I thought I was going mad. There’s no way it’s possible. Not…” This time she did look away, a warm pink deepening on her cheeks.

He couldn’t help but smirk. “Not with a Rionnaghan?”

She shook her head. Then nodded. Then shook it again and broke into a half laugh, half sob.

“Don’t worry, mo shíoghrá. I could hardly believe it, either. I mean, look at me.” He eased himself away, painful as it felt to do so, just enough for her to get a good scan of him from head to toe. “I’m an absolute beast compared to your beauty. And I daresay, you make me wonder if I’m a halfwit whenever that clever tongue of yours gets to work.”

Siobhan balked. Shook her head more, this time in a slight panic. “Oh! No! No, no, I don’t—please, I will work on it! I promise! Mother says I’m always—”

Her words cut off when his lips captured hers, soft and sweet until it deepened with the hunger and longing he’d kept leashed for her sake. Everything for her sake.

Although, now that he got to taste her once more, he felt that leash slipping away as if melting in their shared heat.

“Don’t change,” Alexander rasped against her mouth before stealing another languid kiss. “Not for me. Not ever. I need your challenge. Your fire.” Another kiss. “Your ice.” And another, this one threatening to pin her to the nearest tree and begin the slow, thorough claiming of her body.

But Alexander Rionnaghan didn’t want only her body.

He wanted her completely, heart and soul.

And he wanted to be what she leaned on, not some stupid sycamore tree that wouldn’t know how to hold her or comfort her or make her voice sing with the kind of pleasure he ached to give her.

So he anchored her soft curves to his body hardened by years of training with the Gardaí and fighting skirmishes across the realms. His hands wandered and explored while also respecting the fact that she was still a lady, his lady, free to shove him away and slap him into the Outworld should she so choose. No amount of muscle would prevent her from exercising free will and choice, even if that choice was to part from him.

Given the way her smooth voice melted into a whimper when his thumb circled the underside of her breast, he sincerely doubted that possibility crossed her mind.

“Alexander,” she breathed when they managed to break the kiss for some much-needed air.

“Siobhan.” He nuzzled her jaw, rubbing soft kisses to her even softer skin. Gods, he wanted to wake up to her just like this every morning. Her sweet hair fanned across both their pillows, her sleepy face near enough to his that covering her with his love would be effortless. “I may have had my pick of queens, but you are my one and only wife. You are the only one who holds my heart. You are the only woman who has pulled me out of hiding and into this accursed ritual to run for gods know how long just so I could soothe your worries and hold you in my arms.”

This time, she was the one to pull him close for yet another kiss. She was the one to struggle to keep her hands in appropriate places, even as they wandered over the leather belts resting precariously close to his groin.

“And you better believe, my lady, that when our crowns are off at the end of each day, I’m personally peeling those royal robes from your delectable body and reminding you, thoroughly,” he let his fingers gently dig into the barest outer curves of her rear so she’d feel the truth in his promise, “of how much I love you. My woman. My wife. And yes, one day the bearer of every emblem of our loving passion. Of which I plan to forge many.”

Her lidded eyes flew open. She barked a laugh. “Many? How many?!”

Alexander grinned wide. Boldly rubbed both hands over her flanks, firm and possessive and on the razor’s edge between leaving things as they stood or ripping every layer of fabric off. “Given the way you drive me wild just by breathing? I imagine we could start our own nation with our brood.”

They sank into each other’s embrace, sealing the bond between them with caresses of hands and lips and a playful flick of her tongue along his neck which made him growl with a warm warning that neither of them might make it back to An Rása before someone noticed their diversion off the designated path. Siobhan did not think it a problem, opting instead to tuck her fingertips inside the belt line of his pants with a coy little smile and whispered suggestion that they take every advantage of these stolen moments.

A twig snapped behind Alexander.

Then another.

He grabbed Siobhan and spun them both so his body would shield hers as he faced the intruder, his heart hammering in his chest at the instant thought that someone or something might harm his bride.

One of the unpaired high lords, a generally insufferable arsehole from House Farwyn, glowered at the pair as he approached. “You are not on the path,” he stated rather bluntly.

Alexander squared his shoulders. Held a hand behind himself to make sure Siobhan stayed where it was safe. “Neither are you.”

“I’m hunting my bride.”

Now was not the time to dissect just how wrong that sentence sounded. Alexander scoffed through his own deepening frown. “Well, then, get back to it. Over there. Way over there.”

Farwyn—for Alexander couldn’t remember his first name, even though every anticipating heir went by their first names until the full mantle of lordship passed from deceased father to expectant son—slowly shook his head. “She’s not on the path, either.” He shifted his stare to just beyond Alexander’s shoulder. “She’s right here.”

A whispered string of exceptionally colorful curses hissed through Siobhan’s teeth. Were it not for the knife strapped at Farwyn’s belt and currently inches from his fingers, Alexander would have burst into laughter. How could he be so blessed that the gods gave him this delightful woman?

“I’m afraid you are mistaken,” the crown prince said with an easy shrug. “Mistaken, and fucking blind.”

Those last two words echoed with warning.

Farwyn cocked a brow. “Do you think I don’t recognize Lady Siobhan’s hair? Her figure?” He also shrugged and carefully slid his knife from its sheath. “Or that I’m going to obey the rules while you’ve clearly broken all of them?”

Fuck.

“I claimed her.” A truth that existed in an unconventional way that did not match Farwyn’s or anyone’s strict definition of the term when it came to The Race. They hadn’t gotten that far. “I caught her, I claimed her, and I’m keeping her.”

“That’s where you’re mistaken, Your Highness.” Farwyn didn’t lace the title with sarcasm, which was probably more maddening than if he had. He remained cold and calculating, as if discussing weather patterns or the orbital trajectories of the Otherworld’s moons. He took one, two, three steps forward and watched as Alexander inched himself and Siobhan back. “I claimed Siobhan long before you had the pleasure of meeting her. For all we know, she carries my babe in her belly as we speak.”

An indignant shriek sounded from her, quickly followed by an illustrious chant of curses in the Old Tongue which could have scathed the skin off the high lord if she possessed that ability. He was a bit rusty on the linguistics himself, but Alexander caught the words, “liar”, “bastard”, and something he dared not repeat in translation even inside his mind.

He was going to kiss that dirty mouth and beg her to make it even dirtier while riding him.

Alas, first things first. “One more step, Farwyn, and one more dissenting word against my wife? I’ll have no choice but to end your line right here and now.”

This time, Siobhan’s gasp was softer and she gripped Alexander’s forearm. “Don’t kill him!” She whispered.

“I didn’t say I was going to kill him.”

A breath. A beat. And then a sigh paired with a soft pat on his arm. “Oh. Right. Yes. Do that. I’m fine with that.”

Gods above, he loved this woman.

Farwyn spun the knife in his hand and smirked. “Don’t be a fool, Alexander. I know you have your own personal healing baths, so I know I’m at liberty to cut you open within an inch of your life if you insist on denying me my woman. I won’t hurt her,” he gestured with the blade at Siobhan, “but I must be honest. I’ll enjoy hurting you.”

“This is about some old grudge, then?” Alexander nearly rolled his eyes. Of course it was. “Some crime my father committed against yours or your grandfather or whatever?”

“Something like that.”

The swipe came too obvious to catch the prince unawares, and it seemed almost embarrassing to even dodge the attempted blow from such a lazy hand. Be as it may, Farwyn tried again with a frustrated snarl and this time sliced for the jugular despite his earlier claim. Alexander ducked and used the motion to swiftly grab his boot knife. He also used that opportunity to actually land a slice across the back of Farwyn’s calf, which caused the high lord to cry out and stumble to the side.

“I drew blood.” Alexander held the dripping blade out at his side as he rose for everyone to see. “Call it good? Seems only fair.”

“I’ll kill you!”

Farwyn lunged at the crown prince and feigned for a tackle, but even though he trained in combat with the best tutors his family could afford, it still did not add up to the extended years of brutality his opponent endured to get to this point. Every swipe was dodged, every jab blocked, every attempt to throw Alexander off his footing failed to even make the man put in real effort.

Only once did the high lord actually get the upper hand. He muttered something under his breath that made the prince pause, eyes widened, and then grinned as he made for a maiming blow.

Something whizzed through the air and struck him through the billowing sleeve of his shirt.

Another followed as he spun, piercing the other sleeve and yanking him back with a hard slam against the bark.

More icicles as sharp as spearheads shot into the sycamore tree, lining his body like a wintery crime scene silhouette until the final one grazed his cheek just close enough to draw a long, thin line of crimson.

Siobhan glared at the high lord. She didn’t lower her outstretched arm until it became clear he wasn’t able to pull himself free no matter how hard he struggled—and oh, did he fight for his freedom.

“You bitch!”

“You’re boring.” She strode across the green grass with all the confidence of a queen simply absent a physical crown. With the way the sunlight haloed her head, Alexander had no trouble envisioning one gracing her silken braid. “We shared one stupid little kiss and you suddenly think you have any rights to me whatsoever? Please.” Her nose curled as she regarded him with disgust. “You taste awful. See a dentist. May the gods have mercy on whoever pities you enough to bear you children because I sure as hell won’t.”

She turned to Alexander, who met her with his own concern and they both checked each other for injuries. Which was sweet on his part, considering her involvement was an impressive show of airborne missiles compared to his knife fight. “Are you hurt?”

Alexander shook his head. All he could do was stare at her in awe and wonder, his calloused hands cradling her face. “I ache, but not from wounds.”

She frowned. “Ache? Where?’

He slowly lofted a brow.

“…Oh.” Her blush returned, and she leaned in closer so only he would hear her next words. “You know, I did see a cave behind that waterfall. I’m sure there’s something we could do about that…” She flicked her gaze lower the same time her tongue darted over a supple lip. “…‘ache’.”

Farwyn sputtered a harsh protest but was quickly muzzled by a band of ice which sealed over the bottom half of his face. Even though his gagged-and-bound situation would eventually melt away, this bought the couple enough time to dart into the trees, down the snowy path Siobhan created over the pond, and through the veil of water that soon solidified into a sound-proofing wall of iridescent ice.

Well, almost soundproof.

Whatever buzzing dissent floated among the high lords and ladies who waited within the Great Hall for the initial results of An Rása, it vanished the moment the air near the main doors split open and a portal appeared.

Alexander Rionnaghan stepped through, shirtless and covered in thin pink lines all over his shoulder, arms, and back—and a brilliant grin of pride practically splitting his face in two. In his hand he held that of Lady Siobhan of House Deighear, her long hair completely undone from its braid and voluminous where hands raked through…and gripped…and tugged…which were undoubtedly the same hands that ripped the skirts of her dress clean up to her thigh and haphazardly helped her re-lace the boned corset bodice.

If anyone dared get close enough to the young and similarly grinning woman, they would notice those laces came from a pair of white leather boots.

The originals lay in tatters in a cave somewhere deep in the southwestern forests, along with what remained of her leggings piled on top of the now-useless footwear.

“Y-your H-h-highness!” One of the elderly high lords, someone whose name Alexander definitely could not be bothered to remember right now, stumbled forward with shock and indignation etched in his wrinkles. “The Race! You cannot portal through—”

“Once a mate has been claimed, the runners can use any means necessary to return to Baronane and begin the Assessment.” Alexander spoke with respect, but also with a hint of a tone which suggested the high lord might want to think twice before challenging him. “I read the fine print, my lord. I have also claimed my mate.”

Not-so-hushed whispers filled the vast room as the people turned their wide-eyed stares to the giddy young woman leaning a bit heavily on her prince’s arm.

After a moment, a guffaw of surprise and joy bellowed from somewhere near the balcony doors.

“Oh, dear gods…” Siobhan pinched her eyes shut with a lopsided smile. “That would be my father.”

Alexander’s grin only widened. He squeezed her hand reassuringly, unfazed by the understandably boisterous proclamation of, “That’s my daughter!”

Which, after yet another moment, was followed by a far less enthusiastic, “That’s my daughter!”

“I love you. Please run.”

“Not a chance.” With a kiss to the back of her hand, Alexander turned them to face the oncoming parents who consisted of a red-faced and confusedly-emotional older man and his far more serene wife. “Lord and Lady Deighear. I must thank you, from the depths of my soul, for the incredible gift of your daughter. I want to personally assure you, before the gods and every Great House in this room, that this is not just an instance of capture and claiming.” He stole a loving glance at his blushing bride. “She is my anamcara. My heart and my soul. I apologize for not mentioning anything sooner, but…” He sighed and shrugged, meeting her father’s perplexed stare. “I do truly love her. I would never force anything upon her she did not wish for herself.”

Lord Deighear cleared his throat, pointedly avoiding any sort of once-over that might linger too long on her state of…one could call it, “dress”. “Is this true, my darling? Is His Highness your gods-given soulmate?”

Siobhan shared a brief glance with her mother, something deeper passing between them before the lovesick joy returned to her face. “It is, Father. I confess to not realizing it at the time, but it has since become exceptionally clear.” Her flush brightened when her mind flitted back to only an hour or so ago, and Alexander did not miss the way she shifted her weight from one foot to the other while pressing her thighs together.

Careful, my love. I’m trying to make a good impression!

She stole a quick glance at her betrothed, her countenance only slightly icing over with warning. I am not the one who tore my clothes all to shreds!

No, but you are the one who marked me more than all these runes put together.

Lady Deighear regarded her daughter with immense pride. Even though she was not as animated as her husband, she did not hold back the happiness she felt for this union. “Our blessings upon both of you, our beloved daughter and son-in-law.”

That irritating high lord coughed and stepped into their circle with an upheld finger. “Pardon me, my lady, but there is still the Assessment to conduct, as well as the ceremonies should Lady Siobhan qualify—”

“Are you saying something about our daughter?” Lord Deighear rumbled, his face reddening once more.

Alexander laughed with a shake of his head. “Do not worry about it, my lord. No one would dare imply their future queen is anything but the utmost qualified for their king. Or challenge his word at that.”

“B-but, Your Highness—”

“And if there is any doubt about who my bride belongs to,” he added with a much louder voice filled with taunting authority as his hardened gaze landed on House Farwyn, “I am certain Lord Farwyn’s son will provide a most illustrious testimony verifying that I and I alone claimed her during An Rása. He did, after all, bear witness to most of it.”

I think we’ve scarred him for life.

Good. Or in the very least, given him some pointers for that poor future wife of his.

Siobhan clapped a hand over her mouth when she snorted a loud laugh.

Alexander tugged her closer to his side and wrapped an arm around her. He didn’t give two flying harpies what anyone thought of their union. It was valid, it was sealed, and he had personally verified in the most delightful way that she’d been completely untouched before him.

Stop.

He tried to hide the slight frown. Stop what?

Remembering. Siobhan bit the inside of her cheek and tried to pretend as if she was listening to her mother describe the impending dressmaking schedule. It’s very distracting.

You’re very distracting.

I can’t help that.

Neither can I.

“Mother,” she cooed with a loving touch to Lady Deighear’s arm, “would you and Father like to join us for—”

Lunch. Tomorrow.

“–lunch? Tomorrow. I’m feeling a bit tired, and…” She waved a hand over herself as if to indicate she’d just run a marathon across continents. “The Race, you know. It’s truly exhausting.”

Now it was Lady Deighear who snorted and quickly covered that burst with a cough for her husband’s sake. He still seemed to not know which emotion to settle on, but that was a sign of a wonderful father. “Of course, my darling. We will stay at one of the inns in the city.”

“Take my escort.” Alexander nodded for one of his trusted footmen, only a level below Gardaí in terms of security but far more adept at arranging travel, to attend to his soon-to-be in-laws. “I want nothing but the absolute best for my family.”

That helped Lord Deighear finally determine a mood. His chest puffed with pride and he gallantly thanked the crown prince loud enough for every Great House to hear, then allowed the footman to lead him and his wife through the palace to their luxurious accommodations.

Siobhan turned to her betrothed. “Is there something wrong with meeting for supper?” She asked in a whisper.

“Yes.” Alexander focused on grabbing the shoulder of the high lord who cared a little too much about procedure. “My lord, since you are the expert in these matters, I trust you will arrange for my beloved’s examination to occur tomorrow afternoon? Say, around two? Not a minute sooner or later.”

The old man bowed. “Of course, Your Highness.”

“Gather the Tionòl for tomorrow evening. This precious Assessment will be completed by day’s end, or there will be hell to pay. Understood?”

This agreement held more hesitation, but the high lord assented. “Yes, Sire.”

“Good man.”

Seriously, Alexander. What’s going on?

He simply smirked and led her out of the Great Hall into a wide corridor which would eventually lead to the royal suites, most of them gathering dust in the wake of Riordhan’s chaotic departure. On a second thought, he tugged her with him around a sharp corner into a much smaller space and waited to see if anyone was following them.

Then, once the coast was clear, he stretched out an arm and opened a portal to the Night Realm.

A rather specific bedroom in the Night Realm.

“We’re going to be busy during supper.” Alexander’s smirk grew as he studied her expression. “And I’m having you for breakfast, so…”

“Alexander!”

“Save your voice, mo ghrá. I don’t think you’ll have much of it left by morning.”

The adventure continues and the Wild Hunt begins…

Queen of Night debuts September 30, 2026

The cat-and-mouse game between ancient bloodlines and modern political engines continues to weave between the Outworld and Otherworld, between friends and families, between what’s real and what’s simply a means to survive.

And if they’re not careful, those who hold the threads risk awakening the very entity prophesied to bring about their destruction.

Pre-Order the eBook

Enjoy more great books from these authors:

A Quick Update From Part 1:

Bless each and every one of you who recommended Affinity, the 100% FREE alternative to Photoshop.

Holy.

Cow.

How have I lived this long without it???

I’m still needing to carve out some solid time to deep-dive into the tutorials so I can learn it, and then use it at the levels I’ve always dreamed of being able to do with virtually everything. But it looks so pretty—and so reassuring—sitting there in my MacBook Air applications folder like a reminder that yes, I can do this. I can have pretty pictures I made myself even when I was poor 🥹

Some of you recommended Ulysses, and I did look into that. Promise. I was just really turned off by the monthly/annual fee when Scrivener is a one-and-done investment of only $50. I might give Ulysses a solid go for one year when I have the $40 to spare for experiments, as I’m wondering if separating platforms for series might make my brain relax a little more (The White City is a bit different in construct from Song of the Sidhe). The iPad-to-Macbook seamless syncing is a HUGE appeal and where it does currently override Scrivener, but I’m not an iPad-keyboard-user at all so I’m not sure if this will actually benefit me. TBD!

“How long will you hide

oh queen of the night?
How long will you shudder

when you should fight?”

The third book in the award-winning modern epic romantasy series is around the corner—and right now is the perfect time to join the official Advance Reader Copy (ARC) team!

Members of 🍄The ARC Circle🍄 enjoy:

FREE admission

FREE digital copies of Ithandryll (Book 1) and Heir of Oberon (Book 2)

ARCs for each upcoming book in the Song of the Sidhe series

First Access to promotions on paperbacks and special editions

Exclusive Access to the private Discord server

Gifts & Goodies from the author (me!) like digital stickers, letters from the Otherworld, and more!

✨🌙ARCs for Queen of Night will be distributed mid-August✨🌙

Join 🍄The ARC Circle🍄

What’s A Non-Negotiable Expense

I couldn’t think of a “Wow, Nikki is so wise and articulate!” intro, so I’m just gonna dive right in and get real with ya’ll in this article, the “Part 2” of my (Quick Reference) Broke Author’s Guide to Running the Business:

There are a few things that do cost money—not much, thank goodness—that you must have as a professional independent author if you’re serious about your career and want to position yourself for success within the industry.

Non-negotiable. No arguments. No excuses. None of this “if I have to choose between feeding myself or having that” nonsense people have given me in the recent past because all of these exist to help you make that money for your food.

Think of it this way: even with brick-and-mortar 9 to 5 jobs, you still incur non-negotiable expenses. Fuel for your vehicle, public transport passes if you don’t drive, the food and drinks you consume along the way (whether you prepared them ahead of time or bought on the go), the clothes you wear so you don’t arrive in pajamas…all of those are required expenses we don’t bat an eye at because they make sense.

So why is it such a battle when I bring up the things authors need that also make sense—and that cost way less than anything I just listed?

Remember, I’m coming from a very real place of having to decided between eating a meal now or building a foundation that will feed me for years to come. I’m also someone who thrifted clothing and scraped together food app coupons to make the commute from Gary, Indiana to my administration job in Old Town, Chicago as feasible as possible.

I know how much “reality” costs.

I also know which option is cheaper while yielding more results.

Without these small investments, it’s a coin toss on whether people and companies (like publishers, sub-rights reps, etc.) will invest in you. They might, they could, but not as consistently or assuredly as with those who do incorporate these Non-Negotiable Business Expenses—and a huge reason why is because of how easy it is for scammers to imitate you.

Custom Web Domain

I highly recommend going through Squarespace for this, as it’s the least expensive of all the options I’ve looked into and the easiest interface for working with DNS records should the need arise. It used to be Google Domains, but Squarespace bought it out—which means you don’t have to pay the website developer for access to your domain dashboard. You also don’t need to have a website with them, either.

The average cost of a custom domain runs anywhere between $12-$14/year. If the domain name you plug in costs more than that, change the name until you find one you like that also stays within that price range.

It’s genuinely that simple. And that affordable.

What’s not simple is the ability to use a custom domain you don’t own and don’t have access to the DNS records for—which is why scam emails will more often come from nikkiauberkettpublishing@gmail.com instead of nikki@nikkiauberkett.com (and that’s my real email address; you can click on it and send me a note!). I own the domain, I own the access to the DNS and MS records, and I have my business email programmed specifically to that.

Once you have the custom domain, you can use it everywhere: your website, your email inbox, and if you’re extra tech savvy or willing to read through a quick tutorial, you can even set up subdomains to redirect other things under the same branded URL.

For example: biolink.nikkiauberkett.com is a subdomain redirecting to my Beacons link-in-bio so it looks clean and gets rid of that super misleading “.ai” tag that makes my eye twitch every time I see it.

Here’s another thing to consider: most people in the publishing industry (and other industries) know how much a custom domain costs. So when a jumbled URL appears in the contact information for an author’s website, one of the first questions that comes to mind is, for better or for worse, “They want me to invest in their books, but they couldn’t swing $14 for their website? What other corners are they cutting?”

A Quick Note: perception shifts in your favor between Author Website and Author Store Site. Shopping URLs are notoriously messy no matter how much customization is done, so honestly, I think you’re fine if your only website right now is literally just a grid page showcasing your books and merch. Or if you’re like me and using Substack for your main website but linking in Square for the e-commerce (Coming Soon, btw!), a lot of people have confirmed that it’s almost expected for the main site to be clean in the URL but the shop site to be something like square.shop.books.123456.com/234542!@#$

Business Email

This is the one that people love yelling at me for and hate hearing me say it:

Get. A. Business. Email.

Google is only $7.50/month and includes even more programs in Google Workspace, like Meet (buh-bye, Zoom) and larger storage capabilities in Drive. That’s the price of one Frappuccino at Starbucks, or actually less than if rumors of recent price hikes in the coffee world are true.

Why do I go so hard on this despite having my rear end kicked repeatedly by dissenters?

The Scene: I wake up, get dressed, have breakfast. Check my email. There’s an awesome pitch email from a fellow indie author who runs a book club and truly loved my contemporary take on romantasy, and they want to interview me for their next club newsletter. Would I be interested?

Definitely!

If only that email address wasn’t MarkTwain67@gmail.com

Scammers are getting good. I almost bought into one from the name and position of someone who genuinely exists in the publishing world by that name, in that position, and the company they work for is the company web address the email linked to.

But I checked the email domain. Then I checked the real company website and the domain their business emails send from (usually listed in Team Bios). Confirmed it was not, in fact, the actual person or company.

I’m also a bookstore retailer, so I have to double-down on this when receiving pitches for books from authors who want me to invest in their work. Even though I’m currently consignment-only, I’m working on a buyout stage to shift into direct wholesale purchasing and yes of course I want authors to contact me with pitches for their books!

But I can’t trust MargaretAtwood@gmail.com

I can trust hello@margaretatwoodisawesome.com especially when I’m able to go to her Author Website and confirm it either directly with her agent, her, or the contact information published on the site. (Please Note: I don’t actually know what her email is. I made that up as an example.)

Editing

Editing is expensive as hell. I get that. Zero argument from me.

But you’re paying a professionally trained, highly educated human being to dedicate precious hours of their life to your work and only your work. That high price tag does often come with exclusivity to your project when it’s with a well-credentialed, well-respected freelance editor—meaning they might be fully booked, but they’re tackling one project at a time instead of split-screening copy edits between 4 projects to meet quotas.

There are three rules to this investment::

1. Never, ever, ever rely on self-editing, beta readers, or some guy you know from that one college class three years ago to “replace” professional editing if your goal is to publish the manuscript and sell the book beyond friends and family. Supplement the editing? Sure! But none of that replaces the trained eye of a professional editor. Ever.

   1. To Everyone Who Can Actually Self-Edit & Do A Genuinely Good Job (coughmecough): Don’t be going around telling people this is a viable option. It’s like being a structural engineer and proclaiming to the masses that it’s totally possible to design and build your own house without investing in contractors. Possible for you? Sure! But is it a good idea to encourage this to everyone who’s never taken a single course on the topic? Hell no.

2. Never “go cheap” with an editor unless they have the portfolio and testimonies—and maybe a plausible situation, like me bartering editing for Vellum or copies of your book for my bookstore—to guarantee you’re going to get quality work. Show me an “affordable editor” and I’ll show you someone who probably doesn’t know how to operate their business in a sustainable way, and/or they’re not as good as they want you to think.

   1. Before you go all rage-y on me for sounding judge-y, listen: I called it a couple of years back with a particular author services company that’s no longer…enchanted by the industry. Nice enough person, but priced herself way too low, took on too many projects at once to cover the gap between the low prices and amounting bills, and then the work didn’t always meet the criteria. I did tell her, pro editor to pro editor, that this wasn’t sustainable long-term and I’d be happy to help her get some restructuring brainstormed. She turned me down, which is fine…but what I foresaw happening at some point happened exactly earlier this year.

3. Always read the contract, and do not send money until you’ve read, reviewed, and signed the contract. If you don’t understand contract terms, scrape a little bit together to consult an attorney in person who will read it over with you. (I’m also adding a workbook to the Author Vault that goes over editing contracts; available to Paid Subscribers!) But DO NOT—I mean it—send anyone money unless you have read the exact contract for your services, you understand every single term, clause, and loophole, and you 1000% agree to every syllable. This is how contractual arrangements screw over innocent people: you might feel “off” about something, but if it’s legal and you agreed to it, there’s nothing that can un-do the situation if things go “belly up”.

Your best friend that even freelancers love: payment plans. If they don’t have one posted on their site, ask for the option. As a former pro freelance editor myself, I can tell you the professional anxiety was greatly lessened when I knew there was a regular payment coming in each month or every other week while I worked on the manuscript. A couple grand up front is always nice! But a consistent couple hundred bucks for 4-6 months massages the “what if” anxiety in the brain. Trust me.

Human Artwork

It doesn’t matter if you’re totally fine with generative AI.

If you’ve ever wanted to see your career explode into flames before it even lifted off the ground, then please, by all means: use genAI to get your books illustrated/designed/whatever.

Maybe you’re totally fine with the massive negative environmental impact data centers have on our planet. You may think it’s easier, even better, to skip the time and fees and awkward conversations that come with commissioning an artist and just ask your AI agent to drum up something for you for that Reel or TikTok or book cover.

Easier is not always better. In this case, it’s worse than all the other options.

Go to human artists.

Here are a few human options that don’t require financial gymnastics:

• Participate in giveaways (I did! That’s how I found my new fave artist for Song of the Sidhe). It’s not always a guarantee, but you have a better chance of winning a free piece of commissioned artwork than if you skipped this entirely. And you never know—that artist might fall in love with your story, your books, and/or your brand and want to do a little extra to help you out! Just make sure you make it well worth their own investment of time and work into you by promoting the heck outta them, sending referrals their way, and making yourself as easy to work with as humanly possible.

• Hop on Etsy and search graphic asset packs that are confirmed to be hand-drawn by artists—they do exist and they usually cost less than $10, depending on the details and sizes of the work. There are artists who will flip between 100% hand, 100% AI, and 50/50, but they will almost always label which pack falls under which category (and I’ll leave the debate on whether to buy from them at all up to your personal judgment).

• CreativeMarket also has a great selection of graphic assets, and you’ll find more reputable vendors here PLUS monthly freebies you can download (like fancy fonts)! One “pro tip” for this avenue: check to see if the artist is also available on Etsy before you make your final purchase. It’s not a surefire thing for every artist, but I’ve found a few who package their collections differently between the platforms and at different prices.

• Public Domain artwork is gorgeous, familiar, and usually free if you’ve got the technical skills to “harvest” it from the physical items, such as antique books and historical documents. If you’re like me and a total nincompoop when it comes to that skill, sites like Century Library do all the heavy lifting for you so you can pay a small fee and download the assets. A lot of public domain artwork is also available on Etsy from other far-more-skilled-than-I digital collectors!

What’s negotiable, but worth every penny

These are the tools and resources that you could live without, but I promise will make your author career way more enjoyable and easier to operate if/when you’re able to squeeze them into your monthly or annual budget.

Canva Pro

A standard Canva account is 100% free, but the use of many of their tools and options requires a monthly subscription (currently at around $18/$144 for the year). From my own experience, I can assure you from the bottom of my graphic arts-novice soul: you want the subscription. I scrape together every penny I can to make this bill go through because without it, I can’t download transparent PNG files, use AI-free photos and elements that would’ve otherwise been perfect for an article or quick design, and the brand-specific features get super limited.

With a Canva Pro account, you get carte blanche on the platform—including the integrative brand board which helps even the most amateur newbie with choosing fonts and font pairings, color palettes, and special folders for brand-specific photos and graphic assets (like logos, author pics, etc).

They offer a very nice 30-Day Free Trial so you can determine whether this meets your needs and/or justifies the subscription cost.

StoryOrigin

You can get a LOT done on this platform’s Free Tier, but for only $10/month or $100/year, you’ll get access to the group promos and book swaps we indie authors depend on to get our books to new readers at a fast and ad-free level.

This also adds the capability to use StoryOrigin much like BookSirens for ARC distribution by adding your uploaded work (specified by you) to their catalog of Advanced Reader Copies for new readers to discover you, while you also send the links to your curated team. I’ve been using both this and BookSirens simultaneously, and the only difference I’ve experienced is the cost: BookSirens charges around $2 per new reader they send to you (unless you’re on the $100/year plan, and they’re super picky about who they allow onto that) while StoryOrigin takes your overall $10 monthly payment for the whole platform and calls it good.

Planoly

This one is a blessing and a bane: I need it, I just can’t currently afford it.

I’ve tried a lot of different social media schedulers—including the one built in to Canva Pro—and Planoly just hits different. The interface is clean and easy to understand, which my brain loves like one loves a spa in the middle of a hectic workday. The color palette is soft and muted versus the other platforms that blare oranges and yellows in my face, which may seem like a weird thing to care about until you factor in overstimulation as a deterrent to social media graphic design.

Planoly removes all the jargon and blare and mess by putting exactly what you need on your dashboard: calendar in the center, Instagram grid preview on the left. The functionalities are constantly growing (I remember when all they did was help you look at your feed!) and now include Reels and TikTok scheduling. There’s also a marketplace feature? I mention that with a question mark because I have not had the chance to try it out yet—however it’s my understanding that this add-on makes your IG feed “shoppable”.

Which is pretty cool, not gonna lie!

Before I forget: the #1 feature that makes Planoly outperform Canva Pro’s scheduler in my opinion from experience is the carousel capability. Canva’s scheduler is only for single images, and even then it gets messy because it doesn’t simply pull from the template collection you might have set up in one file—it duplicates the whole dang file and makes you sift through it to find that one post image. Annoying. No bueno.

Website Platform Upgrades: Square Pro & Squarespace

After running my own businesses and admin for others on almost every possible major web design platform out there, I’ve narrowed down “who I’d actually pay” to these two platforms specifically, and here’s why (starting with Square Pro):

Square Pro

If you’re growing from books-only into branded merch, or have a significant backlist of books that’s essentially turned your authorship into a somewhat egocentric bookstore (zero shade; I’m so proud of you!!), then you may find Square Pro to be worth every penny to keep that online momentum going.

A Fun Story About Why Them & NOT Shopify:

I own and operate a small bookstore in The Amana Colonies, Iowa, where the tumultuous seasons impact foot traffic and make online retail a necessity to survive the literal storms. When I opened, I started with Squarespace (more on that in a moment) then switched to Square Pro for the in-store transaction inventory tracking, but almost everything I wanted/needed was an extra $25/feature fee on top of the monthly $80-ish, or didn’t exist. So I moved to Shopify, thinking, “this will be so much better; this is where e-commerce lives.”

Except…Shopify isn’t actually that great. Not if you want to offer customers anything more than a super basic inventoried website. Loyalty rewards, product/books reviews, and all the other little things that make customer experience smooth and appealing are EXTRA FEES. What was only supposed to be maybe $50/month quickly turned into $125+ just to get the basic features I thought Shopify already had. Not in my budget.

Right when I’d accepted my fate, my mother—who never once wavered from Square for her tea shop—casually announced a “super neat update” and started talking about things like Loyalty Rewards, text message marketing, email marketing, product reviews, blog posts…all packaged into a brand-new Square Pro subscription structure of only $54/month.

My jaw hit the floor.

My arms threw the proverbial table in rage (okay maybe not so much…but I do recall screaming into my bookstore couch’s pillow).

And that, dear friend, is why Fae•ble’s website is currently offline while I navigate and balance running my authorship while moving everything back to Square for the bookstore. I totally understand that this isn’t the best option for every single author out there, but some of ya’ll have extensive backlists and merchandise selections that you could be getting a lot more for on a lot less than you may be paying in both money and reputation (nothing kills street cred like forced platform branding, amiright?)

Squarespace

This is the perfect and most gorgeous website platform for indie authors who:

• Don’t manage physical inventory at book fairs, festivals, etc. (so pay attention, ebook besties!)

• Want a website focused on readership cultivation via on-site newsletters, blog posts, and seamless design appeal (every drool-worthy, eye-candy author site I’ve checked out has been on Squarespace)

• Want to look like web design pros despite being technological cavemen

• Need a backend interface that’s minimalist in design, massages more than stimulates the visual senses, and makes it extremely difficult to mess something up

Full transparency: if I wasn’t so tight on the funds or diversified in my career aspects, I’d probably be using Squarespace for everything. It does fall short in the physical inventory management, but it’s not completely useless: the Point of Sale interface is identical to Square (they occasionally collaborate) and is great for the one-off in-person transaction. So I guess it’s fair to say if you’re attending the occasional event, Squarespace might work just fine for those transactions!

Why this is my top pick for authors who don’t need e-commerce for their base website: it’s uncomplicated. It’s gorgeous. It holds your hand through everything and speaks softly, with love, when hiccups happen and tears fall. It’s your digital bestie without being AI, and it also makes managing your custom domain (*COUGH*COUGH*) so easy, a toddler could probably figure out the basics. And at the end of the day, even if you have no idea what button you just clicked to make it Do The Thing, your readers both new and fanatic will only see the best version of your digital presence.

“Hey, Nikki, I’m kinda surprised you’re not mentioning Wix. Didn’t you used to use that? Religiously?”

Since 2004.

Until one day, roughly in 2020-2021, I woke up to discover Wix had decided to also arise with the dawn and chose violence.

Or rather, they made the massively erroneous assumption that every user is an experienced web developer. What used to be Easy Peasy Lemon Squeezy suddenly became—literally overnight, I’m not exaggerating that fact—Difficult Difficult Grapefruit Difficult.

No thanks.

Quicken

Bookkeeping.

We don’t talk about it often enough as indie authors.

I’m probably gonna have to write a whole other article about exactly that someday soon—and I’m terrible with math, numbers, etc.

But during one brief and confusing period in Past Nikki’s life (yes, a heartbreaking-and-gorgeous man was involved), “I should become a tax preparer with H&R Block” was a thought that I had and a thing that I pursued. Surprisingly, I actually did pretty good with the quizzes! And the tax laws were fascinating—it’s completely possible to discern who’s in what office out in D.C. just by reading each year’s itemization requirements and deductible qualifications.

You may be rolling your eyes right now and thinking, “well, duh,” but keep in mind that mundane info like this is what gives us glimpses into the personal drama of emperors and kings in eastern Asia (true story: we know some shite went down during one particular evening between an emperor and his favorite wife because of a grocery list).

This brings me to a quick side note: if you can swing the $125 (last I checked) registration fee, it is so completely worth taking the H&R Block tax preparer training course; each year if you can swing it to keep up-to-date with legislative changes. Learning how to do your own taxes as a solopreneur (which is what you are as a professional indie author) is a skill that quickly starts feeling like a gift when tax season rolls around.

I got a little off-track here, so I digress back to Quicken:

For roughly $5/month, discounted on the annual plan (I believe is $50/year?), you get everything you need to run your bookkeeping and keep your accounting stabilized for your own records as much as tax season.

Why this and not Quickbooks:

Aside from Quickbooks being way too overly complicated and one of those giants overdue for a massive fall (I swear, they haven’t cleaned their website UX in years), it’s built for multi-person small businesses. As in, owners who hire managers who hire employees.

You, awesome author, are the owner/manager/employee of your business. You may hire freelancers on contract (which is a W-9 situation), but you probably don’t have W-2 employees on a payroll or engage in the kind of business-to-business finances that Quickbooks users like contractors and restaurants do.

Quicken is specifically designed and geared for solopreneurs whose personal lives and careers blend at the edges. You may sell a paperback on Square and collect the money in that platform’s dedicated business account, but then…maybe…use that same account to go buy a coffee at the local bakery so you can focus on writing your next Substack article (What? Why are you looking at me like that?)

It’s also designed for everyone who has no idea what they’re doing but know they need to be doing something. Anything. To keep the numbers balanced so the IRS doesn’t start acting like the IRA with the tax bill come next April.

Where you can shave costs without feeling (or being) guilty

I’ve listed a lot of options already, so here’s a quick bulleted recap of those:

• For graphic assets and custom fonts: find human artists on Etsy and/or CreativeMarket

• Utilize free trials to determine what’s worth the extra (hopefully temporary) expense—and avoid platforms that don’t offer trials at all

• Stick to free tiers until you can afford the paid tier (and only when it makes sense for what you need to do)

• ONLY ORGANIC MARKETING via posts on social media and email newsletters, blogging SEO, etc. until all that is paying you the same way you need paid advertising to perform

Here are a few more ways to make the most of your career when you’re running on so very little:

• Youtube Tutorials: I always hit up this platform’s search bar before diving into a paid course! Some things really can’t be learned unless you’re “on the inside”, but a lot of expertise is shared on YouTube for free as lead-ins to those same courses or simply because the creator wants to share information and get paid by the platform itself. My personal biggest benefit: watching tutorials created by other authors helps me learn how to use resources and tools I’ve almost written off. Like Scrivener. So if you’re on a 30-day free trial with that, or CanvaPro, or anything else really, do a quick search on YouTube so you can really play with the program and get the most before making that final decision!

• Barcodes: Don’t pay for these. Ever. Go to IngramSpark’s FREE cover design template generator, put all your specs and the ISBN number into the form, then have it send the template to your email inbox. Open that file in Canva or Affinity or whatever you use for your graphic designs, crop down to the barcode, and boom. Done. Now you can copy/paste that wherever you need it on your book cover.

• Kickstarter: With grants for indie authors being practically non-existent, running a Kickstarter for a special edition of your book is one of the best ways to temporarily boost your funds for investments like lifetime licenses, annual subscriptions, and physical inventory. My strongest recommendation when using Kickstarter: focus on an already-published book, NOT a concept! The book world has been burned far too many times by “coming soon” titles that never arrived. Showcasing a special edition of a book with an already-proven track record of, y’know, existing? Easy peasy. Especially when you join the Kickstarter For Authors group on Facebook. {NOTE: a lot of recent posts seem to be genAI-friendly and that definitely gives me the ick, but that’s been super recent. Don’t let momentary mistakes devalue literal years spanning well over a decade of information, tutorials, and proven data still in that Group that have nothing to do with AI and everything to do with getting your Kickstarter fully funded!}

• Subscribe—when you’re able—to the Substacks that support your needs, whatever they may be. Yes, this is a pseudo-shameless plug for my own $5/month; $50/year Paid Subscription tier, but hear me out: this platform is making it way easier, and way more affordable, for creators and educators to share knowledge and resources with you outside of an expensive (and tech-heavy) course. There are Grants for Creators and that publication has done all the heavy research for you! Some publications even teach writers how to monetize blogging and email copywriting as a freelance career to utilize while you’re bootstrapping your authorship. Welcome to the Otherworld gives you access to my ebook backlist, but also tried-and-true resources, templates, spreadsheets, and knowledge I’ve created, researched, designed, developed, and want to share with other indie authors on a weekly basis. In the past, this would have cost you at least $499 up front and cost me even more in platform fees, time spent, migraines endured, course fees to learn how to make my own course…ah, yes, the good ol’ days. *eye twitch*

  • A Quick Note: if you have a unique background that makes your expertise as much as your creativity valuable to others, Substack may be a viable way to bring in passive income. I have a small business management degree (AAS) and cultural anthropology degree (BS) with grad school studies (I was quickly disenchanted by the politics of graduate-level academia) as well as years of experience as an editor, author, journalist, business administrator, and small business consultant—plus I’m terrible at drawing and making videos—so Substack made the most sense for me. Authors who are also artists (lucky ducks) may find more success on Patreon, but don’t quote me on that! I’m just sharing what I hear on social media and Discord.

My final thoughts on “affordability” as an indie author (who can barely afford to convert oxygen)

What you invest in, and whether you invest in anything at all, boils down to what you’re truly, deeply desiring as a self-publishing author.

Notice I didn’t say, “what your goals are”. Everyone has goals. Most of us are very unrealistic when we make them (yo).

What we desire, however, drives our actions and decisions even when we’re not paying attention. I’ve seen authors openly state they don’t care if they never sell a single book, they’re just happy they put it out there…but then a week or so later, start throwing money at paid ads. Not because they don’t know what they’re doing (necessarily), but because they tried minimizing their desires to lessen the anxiety by lying to themselves—and when that desire wasn’t met, desperation set in.

I’ve been yelled at on Threads by indie authors who adamantly refuse to get a business email and custom domain “because if I have to choose between that and groceries, I’m choosing groceries”…but then they make posts not long after openly asking why their authorship isn’t going in the places they expected it to. I’m not gonna be the a-hole who slides in to point out that trading two boxes of cereal for a Google Workspace account makes more sense.

(I am gonna be the somewhat petty person who writes a whole article about it, though 🤪)

The collapse and erasure of OceansofPDF has been quite the cause for celebration in the book publishing industry and community—for both traditionally-published authors and independent authors alike.

As someone who’s had her work screenshot off Kindle and uploaded to this site (you bet I sent them a scathing Take This Down NOW email), I’m relieved to see such a huge digital pirate ship finally sink to the depths of the abyss.

What’s come out of this event, however, has been a fascinating discussion and heated debate over the rights of humanity to literature. For people living in countries and regions with limited access to Amazon’s Kindle marketplace, restricted access to materials overall, and public libraries on the decline (a whole other harrowing article to write someday), the website’s “smuggling” of ebooks has been an invaluable resource.

So they say.

(Yeah, don’t exit this article yet 😆)

I’m going to hold your hand with love, with empathy, and with all the compassion in my heart for fellow authors and Broke AF readers who truly cannot afford to constantly buy books (or have them stolen):

“Get a library card” is not the answer you think it is.

“Find a similar site” also ain’t it.

I could go on and on explaining the nuances and limitations of public library access, including my own personal and present situation where my only viable library card is hanging on a keychain somewhere upstairs and is for the Chicago Public Library.

Where I no longer live.

Because where I do live only has a teeny tiny library tucked inside an old elementary school and is currently under attack by the state government which wants to physically rip such libraries out of their housing to “keep kids safe”.

Yeah.

Like I mentioned before: that a whole other other article to write.

What I’ve found to be shockingly lacking in the plethora of responses from indie authors to readers crying out for a new solution is the list—a long list—of websites that hand out free books like candy on a daily basis.

Seriously. There are so many websites all over the internet where authors and publishers upload books for readers to access for free, legally, with full permission and encouragement to enjoy as many as you can for one very low, non-monetary price:

LEAVE.

A.

BOOK.

REVIEW.

I’m emphasizing that because of how easy it is to get as many books as your heart desires, so long as you’re willing to put in a little (and I do mean _little) bit of effort into paying back the author of the work with an honest book review posted somewhere. Anywhere. Social media, your blog, StoryGraph, Goodreads, I don’t care. We don’t care.

One or two sentences.

Click a star somewhere in the 5-Star row.

Boom. Move on to the next book.

And before you give me that face and start mentally whining, “but I don’t wanna”, just remember that you had to put in the same amount of effort to find, access, and get through the many pop-ups OceansofPDF had in order to steal the same books you could’ve gotten for free with half that effort.

(Yes, I used that site before—to download my own books and figure out how the heck they ended up on there in the first place!)

Authors: relax.

I know, I know. “But now they’ll just try to pirate these books, too!”

Except I had this hunch that the problem was less about actively wanting to steal and more about genuinely not knowing all these sites existed. So I asked people in different countries, like Nigeria, if they’d ever heard of these resources.

Almost unanimously: no. Which tells me—as it should tell you—that openly communicating on a consistent basis where people can get free ebooks without library access has a solid chance of changing the tide in book piracy.

So here, because I love you all and have great hope and faith for your redemption arc:

Discover New Authors

These sites are how you get all the best books before the bookstores (say that five times fast!), from debut indie authors to bestselling, movie-in-the-works trad authors.

“General Access” means it doesn’t really matter who you are or where you’re from: all you have to do is sign up. It does help to have a positive history of reviewing what you read for most of these sites, but they tend to welcome newbies with open arms.

“ARC Management Sites” are company websites that support indie authors by establishing and managing Advance Reader Copy distribution—and all the follow-ups, reminders, announcements, etc.—for the author as a service. An application and some vetting may be required, but this is to ensure you’re serious about reading & reviewing (and NOT just trying to perpetuate piracy, coughcoughcough).

As always, if there have been recent changes I’m not aware of, please let me know in the comments!

General Access Sites—Indie Focused

BookBub

BookSirens

BookSprouts

StoryOrigin

VoraciousReadersOnly {NOTE: At the time of this article’s publishing, this site/platform is “on hiatus” with email signups open for updates}

General Access Sites—Trad Focused

NetGalley

Edelweiss

Advanced Reader Copy (ARC) Team Management Sites

BookBuzzPR

BooksForward

BookFunnel {NOTE: You will need to acquire direct access via author links for their specific books, but this is often easily found via social media profiles & websites}

BookSparks

HiddenGemBooks

Enjoy Classics & Public Domain Books

These are the books that are typically available at any given library, but you don’t need a library card or proof of residence to acquire them.

“Public Domain” means the copyright limitations have expired and the story, its artwork, etc. is now available for open use in the general public without penalty. This is why derivative works like Wicked and fairytale retellings are allowed to be so widely published—the stories, such as The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and Alice in Wonderland, now belong to the public.

A Quick Note: I personally looked through these to check the legalities and disclaimers before listing them here. I will include a link to each site’s information regarding the sourcing of their free ebooks for you to look over. If I have missed an issue regarding any of these, please let me know!

ManyBooks {Info Page}

PDFBooksWorld {Info Page}

Planet eBook {Info Page}

Project Gutenberg {Info Page}

Standard eBooks {Info Page}

Mark Your Calendars

I am not going to list every single Stuff Your Kindle event here because there are far too many! But I will definitely share the links to both the official organization site and the list of other similar-but-unaffiliated events I know of off the top of my head:

Stuff Your Kindle: Book Blasts

Indie Author Collective

Indie Book Directory

FaRoSociety

Digital Library Websites

These may require a public library membership! But they’re still worth checking out, especially as the digital world continuously shifts and evolves to adapt to needs and preferences worldwide:

BorrowBox

cloudLibrary

Hoopla

Libby

Open Library

Author Newsletters

Surprise! There’s more than one reason to subscribe to an author’s newsletter (even though you and I know it’s mainly for their work)!

If you subscribe to my Substack, you’ve officially subscribed to my Author Newsletter—because I am way too overloaded with everything else to maintain a blog/newsletter/website individually. I needed to one-and-done it, so here we are.

Hundreds of other authors maintain newsletters with the added benefit of Group Promos and Book Swaps: smaller collections of free and steeply discounted books to help each other reach more readers.

This is why you may have noticed “ads” at the bottom of my weekly posts—they’re not actually advertisements, but my way of participating in book promos so you’re always “in the know” and have access to more free ebooks as they debut. These do have expiration dates, so grab everything while you can!

And this is where I’ll sign off with this gentle, loving, FIRM reminder:

It’s very silly to steal stuff that’s offered for free.

“It’s been a while, old friend.”

Cade rubbed the bridge of his nose. “This…you. What are you doing here?”

The world around him still seemed a bit blurry, but the man casually reclining against one of his imported cars came into focus a lot faster than the rest. His smirk most of all, poised beneath a pair of darkly tinted glasses which hid the amusement glimmering in his eyes. “You tell me,” he said with a half-hearted shrug.

“Get off my car.” Cade straightened, finally regaining his bearings.

Well, his footing, at least.

“It’s not your car.” The man snorted and shook his head. “I know it’s been a while since you called me, but damn. You’re getting soft, Caeden.”

“What are you—” His voice cut off the moment he pressed a hand to the cool metal of the car’s roof. He couldn’t feel it, not the way he would if this truly was the middle of the night in Streeterville. “Shit.”

The man shook his head again, the leather of his jacket creaking as he folded his arms. “No wonder you called. Do we need to revisit Dreamwalking 101?” He chimed in a rather patronizing sing-song voice, tilting his dark glasses down his nose.

Cade yanked his hand back. Then checked to make sure he was completely dressed before glaring at this unwelcome visitor. He was getting a lot of those today. “You keep saying I called you. I did no such thing.”

“Sure you did.” The man paused, then waved his fingers back and forth. “Eh, okay, maybe I got called on your behalf. My cousin noticed a few things and he told me to check on you whenever you decided to take your siesta.”

“Fine. Let’s get this over with.”

“You know, I remember you being a thousand times friendlier the last time we hung out.”

“I’m pretty sure that was right before the fire. So forgive me for developing an edge.”

A toothy grin spread across the man’s face, glinting in the moonless glow of the Dream Realm. “Ah, but you’ve always had an edge. This is different.” He pushed himself off the car to move closer to Cade. “This,” he said as he gave him a once-over, “is a whole shit ton of denial. Very interesting indeed.”

“Will you just get to the point? What do you even go by these days?”

“Aww, but still so considerate. Thank you, darling. ‘Epiales’ did stop rolling off the tongue somewhere around the seventeenth century, and you’ve always known me as—”

“Annoying.”

“Don’t be rude.” He rolled a shoulder, sending the thick curtain of black hair to his back. With a flick of his hand, a cigarette appeared between his fingers. It lit on the first drag, as it always did whenever he felt like flexing a little dream magic. When his smoke rings blown at Cade made the man stifle a cough, he chuckled. “There. Now we’re even. As I was saying, things have been rumbling through the realms and sending ripples our way. Now, seeing the state you’re in, I have to wonder.”

Cade didn’t want to entertain anything his old friend said. But he also knew better than to dismiss the riddled warnings of his kind. Especially when delivered personally like this. “Alright, fine.” He spread his arms out to the empty street, both in surrender and to check and make sure it actually was empty. “I’m all ears. What the hell are you talking about?”

The man—Epiales, since he forgot to update Cade on this century’s chosen moniker—took one more drag of the cigarette before flicking it to the ground and stomping out the ember. “Word on the street says you got yourself a lovely lady—”

Cade didn’t need to think about it. He just went for it, grabbing Epiales by the collar of his leather jacket and slamming him hard against the car. Even if Cade didn’t feel much of anything in this realm, he knew he did. “Stay the fuck away from her. Do you hear me?”

“And this,” Epiales wheezed with a laugh, his grin wider, “is exactly why my cousin sent me to check on you. Look at you! This is new! This is different.”

Cade immediately let go and took several steps back. “It’s nothing.”

“Bullshit. If that was nothing, then there’s a whole bunch of ‘nothing’ going on that you need to know about. Oh, yeah.” He straightened out his clothes and took his time adjusting the rings on his fingers before elaborating. Another mode of punishment to keep Cade in line.

Or at least keep him waiting.

Epiales cracked his neck. Then sighed. “You’ve got nothing to worry about from me. She’s telling you the truth—she is an absolute virgin in every way. Can’t do much with that, and I wouldn’t even if I could.” He leveled his own deadpan glare at Cade. “Because unlike some people, I remember how to treat my friends.”

Read more

This time, Cade’s laugh was genuine. “You’re not serious.”

“Serious as the plague, Devoy.” Lief didn’t draw his own gun, but he gave the signal to their men to train every weapon on their reluctant host. “If she was important enough to die for, she’s valuable to us.”

“Consider us taking your advice,” Anders quipped with a sudden cheerfulness, undoubtedly sourced from his renewed confidence at having the upper hand. “We’ll make a new heir. Maybe a sibling for him, too, just in case you decide to fuck things up again.”

Oleg chuckled. “An heir and a spare.”

“An heir and a spare, I like it!” All the men, save for Cade and Vic, joined in with a chuckle at the terribly overused joke. “So go on, Devoy. Hand her over to us and consider it a favor that we’re saving you the trouble of dealing with her.”

Cade set his jaw and waited for the old man to stop blathering before slowly turning around to face him again, raising his hands in feigned surrender. “First of all,” he began with a slow, wry smile, “I don’t have to do shit.”

One by one, glowing red dots appeared all over the Haldorsons’ guards. Then the Haldorsons themselves. He waited quietly until full recognition dawned on each and every one of them.

Their guns began to lower.

“Second of all, you’re what, fifty-five? Sixty-five? That’s disgusting.”

“A lot younger than you,” Oleg sniffed. He was the first to fully lower his weapon and even took the added measure to holster it before raising his own empty hands for the benefit of the snipers surrounding their little party. “Besides, Anders wasn’t talking about himself. We already agreed I’d be the one to mate with her.”

Cade couldn’t resist. “Shooting blanks, Anders?”

The Outworldish high lord glared, but didn’t make another move. He knew he’d been outnumbered and outmaneuvered. “Fuck you.”

With a nod from Vic, the red dots rose to each of their heads while more of Cade’s personal guards began to emerge from indoors.

And the bushes.

And pretty much everywhere that had once seemed empty when the Haldorsons arrived.

“Gentlemen.” Cade stepped into their circle and lowered his voice so only they could hear the threatening growl on the edge of his words. “I will overlook this incident as a matter of grief, and pain, and a general yet unfortunate misunderstanding. But let me be clear.”

He trained his eyes on Anders, making sure the high lord both heard and understood the depth of every syllable.

“Come into my home like this again and I will end your so-called Great House before you suck in one more pathetic breath. I will burn your entire estate to the ground and make your bastards eat the ash. Understood?”

Oleg and Lief looked to their eldest brother. It was clear Anders did not want to surrender, but even more obvious than that was what would happen if he didn’t. So, with no small amount of reluctance and rage in his eyes, he slowly nodded once.

“Good. Now go back across the lake and stay there. Any business we have? I will come to you.”

This time, Cade waited for exactly no one before turning on his heel and making his way back into the mansion. Vic assumed control of the clean-up measures, which included all but dragging the three brothers back down the semi-public entrance, out to their car, and ensuring every Haldorson man was identified and off the property in less than five minutes.

Seka met him at the French doors of the main entrance back into the living area, brow arched as she watched everything going on behind him. “Did I miss the party?”

“Where were you?”

“Helping your new house guest settle in. As well as settling the accounts from last night—the monetary accounts,” she clarified with one last glance out at the courtyard crowd. “Everything is up to date, everyone accounted for, and we already have rumors of at least three new pregnancies resulting from the festivities.”

Just like everything else to do with fae mating rituals, instincts moved fast. “Be sure to confirm and send our congratulations. Circumstances not withstanding, it sounds like everything was a success.”

Seka’s serene countenance brightened and spread with a mischievous grin. “Oh, I would say so, Lover Boy.”

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Once I figured out what Freeform is and how it can work for planning, storyboarding, etc. I realized I could easily turn it into an article outline!

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Author’s Note: I originally outlined this as a single article, but the information and insights available—even condensed—started to push the word count into “novella” ranges. Make sure to subscribe so you don’t miss Part 2 coming next week!

A few years ago, I had a very lucrative ghostwriting contract that paid for everything I needed, started paying off…

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This is going to be fun.

The thought held more trepidation than the words themselves suggested.

Cade got out first, then walked around the vehicle to hold the door open for his wide-eyed guest, nodding once to his chauffeur to go ahead and take the car into the garage once she slid out and he shut the door behind her. He held his arm up for her to hold, which she did with a small frown of confusion. “It gets a little tricky,” he explained.

Which both of them knew wasn’t much of an explanation at all.

To any general passersby, and to anyone who might happen to stumble through the front doors of the building, the foyer opened up into a beautifully vintage lobby where modern technology glowed on marble desks carved from an era of Art Deco and yet, to Elena’s surprise and secret delight, echoed from the Commercial Style of Chicago’s 1890s. The slick tiles of the mosaic floor evoked the feeling of a chessboard without being too rigid or sharp-cornered, so much like other historic buildings she’d been inside and yet somehow unique on its own.

Cade nodded to the desk attendant, who inclined his head with a quiet, “Sir,” before returning to the computer screen. The attendant seemed to either not notice Elena, or he was wise enough to not poke his nose into other people’s business.

Which made sense.

Especially when Cade pulled out a silver skeleton key from his pocket, pushed it into the locked sliding gates blocking the elevator vestibule, and turned.

Something low rumbled within the walls as the mechanism sprang to life around the key. Dozens of spinning cogs interlocked with each other danced out of the lock and embedded into the metal framework of the gates in something that looked almost like a code Elena’s mind definitely tried and failed to decipher, according to the way her brows pinched together and her widened eyes scanned the pattern.

The gates unlatched, then slid open without any assistance.

And the moment the pair stepped into the vestibule, the elevators vanished.

Elena’s eyes bugged and she spun around. Gaped at the solid wall behind them. “Um…Cade?”

“I warned you. It gets tricky.”

The lobby they stepped into seemed identical to the previous one, except this time filled with plants she’d never seen before and sculptures of creatures she could only guess fell into the category of “otherworldly”. An alabaster satyr held a cornucopia of cascading blooms that fell into a bed of shimmering star lilies in shades that did not—or should not—exist. In the center of a trickling fountain, the serene likeness of a mermaid outstretched her arm for the water to flow into the sapphire pool.

Which, if Elena’s guess was correct, happened to be lined with actual sapphires.

The attendant behind this desk—on which there were no computers at all—stood as Cade approached, his focus squarely on the strange woman clutching the taller man’s arm. “G-good morning, Sir. We have a guest today?”

“No.” Cade pulled an envelope from inside his jacket and slid it across the counter. “New resident. She’ll need a key and security. Have Vic assign a contingency for today until we get the staffing arranged.”

“And her quarters?”

“Shared with mine. No need to make things complicated.”

The attendant’s mouth opened in surprise, but he quickly shut it before Cade’s frown deepened any further. Elena, for her part, was far too distracted by the gothic-sloped arched ceilings and chandeliers of actual crystals to catch what her companion had just quietly declared. It was only when the attendant cleared his throat that she noticed him, and the fact that he was waiting for her to put her hand in his. “I’ll need your blood, madame.”

“Sorry, what?”

“Your blood.” The attendant held up a skeleton key just like Cade’s. “For your key. It’s just a tiny prick, I assure you.”

Elena took a half step back. “Why?” She looked to Cade, then back at the waiting man. “Wait…is this some sort of blood magic? Brujo?”

“Oh for the love of…” Cade sighed and leaned against the high desk. “No, this is not ‘blood magic’ like what you’re thinking. And no, he is not a witch or warlock or sorcerer or whatever else you might be accusing him of, and neither am I. Those are forbidden here. He just needs to code your DNA into the metal so you, and only you, can get access to this building. Should you do something stupid like lose your key,” he added, his eyes narrowing.

“Excuse you? ‘Something stupid’? Like dragging me out of my home and forcing me to move in with you?”

Hot pink tinged the attendant’s cheekbones and he very suddenly had some paperwork to skim through in one of the ledgers that required his eyes and ears to shut out this conversation.

Cade bit back a very amused smile. “Just give the man your finger so we can let him get back to work. And then you can yell at me some more when we’re upstairs.”

“I wouldn’t be yelling at all if you weren’t always acting like you’re the boss of me!”

“But I am the boss of you. I hired you. You work for me. That’s kind of how this whole thing works.”

Elena rubbed the bridge of her nose with a long-suffering sigh. “Doing what? Painting?”

“I know you meant that facetiously, but yes. That’s exactly what I hired you for.”

One hard stare at him confirmed there was no point in arguing with him. The man was far too sure of himself and set in his ways for her attempted debate to be worth the wasted breath.

So, the only breath she did give him—loudly, so he could hear the irritation paired with reluctant surrender—was the heavy sigh as she held out her finger for the attendant.

The device and the somewhat painful prick reminded her of the onboarding process at the plasma donation center. A click, a chunk, a brief stab, and then he carefully squeezed the tip of her forefinger to collect a large drop of dark blood into the slender tip of an ampoule. “Here,” he muttered apologetically with a quick dab of a cold, damp cotton ball onto the puncture. “That should do it.”

It…did.

Elena held her fingertip up close to her face just to make sure she saw as much as felt what had just happened.

The blood, and the puncture, were gone.

Completely.

“I can feel a hundred more questions starting to bubble up,” Cade grumbled. “The answer is yes, and then no. Yes, you’re done and healed and we can keep moving along. No, I’m not going to spend any more time explaining how it all works.” He took the proffered key, now marked with Elena’s blood and gave the attendant a polite nod. Then pressed his hand to the small of her back and steered her toward the stairs.

To her great relief—which earned a smirk of amusement from his face when he noticed her shoulders relax—they only went up a single flight of winding stairs before he pressed a golden glowing button for the gated elevator. “For a second there, I thought we’d have to climb the whole way.”

Cade snorted. “As much as I love a little sadomasochism, I’m not that cruel.”

“What do you think?” He asked Elena as she shuffled inside the high-rise penthouse.

“I think you live in a palace.” She said it more like a factual statement than an exaggeration, head turning every which way to take it all in. “I kid you not, I used to think this place was a museum. From the outside, I mean.”

“It kind of is, considering everything in it.” He shrugged off his suit jacket and handed it to one of the staff who walked by. They didn’t do a great job hiding their curiosity over the young woman slowly spinning circles in the foyer. “Remind me to show you the library sometime.”

“Cade.” She paused and watched that same staff member quietly vanish into a door that similarly disappeared once they passed through. “I can’t stay here.”

“We already went over this.”

Elena shook her head. “No. I mean, this…this?” Her arms flew out to the sides. “I’m not from here. From this. I don’t belong in this world. I wouldn’t know what to do with a second fork or know when tea time is, or—”

“Relax, ælfscíene. This is temporary. After I take care of some business, you can go back to whatever hovel your heart desires.”

Relief slumped her posture. “Really?”

“No.”

He didn’t have time for this. He definitely did not have time to play host to a human who didn’t know just how royally fucked their situation could become if he didn’t play their cards exactly right.

It was one thing carrying her unconscious body to her apartment—Seka in tow—only to find Elena lived in what amounted to a cereal box with assemble-by-number furniture probably fished out of some flea market dumpster. Cade tried to be all judgmental about it, noting the lack of matching silverware in the kitchen drawers and the threadbare coverlet on her bed…but deep down, it outright bothered him.

She deserved better.

He wanted her to have better.

Which was easy enough to dismiss with a stern internal reminder of why he never let himself become seriously involved with human women. Or anyone, for that matter. After stepping into the outer hallway to let Seka take care of the clothing change, he decided that this would be the closure they both needed to move on.

Unfortunately, a whole new problem arose bright and early this morning in the form of a text from Vic to meet him in the study. Eric’s father and uncles, associates from Detroit, had arrived to politely but firmly demand an explanation as to why their son and heir wasn’t answering his phone.

They knew why.

Cade knew they knew why.

But they wanted to hear it from him before launching into actions that could stir up war between the families. So, he negotiated a deal to give himself enough time to provide them solid answers while tying up loose ends.

The biggest one being Elena Martín.

“There are a few house rules I need you to understand, and then I have to get back to work.” He pressed his hand to her back and ushered her through the foyer to the main drawing room, but didn’t stop to allow her time to admire all the details. “Consider this your tour.”

Elena nodded. Looked around. Kept her sugary mouth shut.

Good. I can work with this.

“My private rooms are upstairs and down the west wing. The left,” he added with a sigh at her confused expression. “West is left, east is right, just…if you need any help, ask anyone in a uniform. My private study is in that same section and off-limits to everyone. Including you.”

“Okay.”

He wasn’t sure if he liked how easily she accepted that, but he shrugged it off and continued. “The kitchen is back here; there’s a professional chef and cooking staff but you can help yourself at any time. If there’s anything you need, just let Heather know.”

“Who’s Heather?”

“Housekeeping. Head of, I mean.”

“Ah.”

“Down that hall is the main study, where I hold most of my meetings and conduct general business. You may enter only if you have a legitimate reason. I don’t like being disturbed.”

Again, Elena remained silent yet attentive. She nodded at his remarks, seemed to absorb the navigation, and didn’t flicker any sort of protest in her sweet face. Which felt…odd.

“Any questions?”

“Yeah.” She blinked up at him. “How much is this gonna cost me?”

Now Cade became the silent one, unsure of what the living hell she meant. “Come again?”

“All this. Private chef, housekeeping, I’m assuming there’s a personal trainer, too—”

“There is, but not for you.” The thought of another man resting a finger on her sweaty body instantly made his blood pressure spike.

“Right. Okay. Even so,” she scoffed, “there’s no way you’re letting me, or making me, stay here for free. It’s gotta cost something, right?”

His brain urged him to breeze through this with some half-assed explanation and get going.

His heart felt the sting of her implication.

Everything below his belt, however?

“What do you want to pay me with?” A lazy smile slowly spread across his face, and he felt himself lean into her personal space before he could stop himself. “I’m happy to negotiate.”

Fear ignited within her amber eyes. So did desire. Her plump lips parted and for a very powerful second Cade resisted the urge to suck that bottom lip between his teeth just to taste her again.

He’d already failed to resist that same temptation earlier. What kind of message would he be giving her if he kept giving in?

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“We have now. We have this moment, right now. Will you live it with me?”

Synopsis

From the book blurb:

Hidden away all twenty-five years of her life in Moonstone Wood, Seraphine Dupont is rudely awakened to the life she was born to live: a princess betrothed to a loathsome prince, destined for a curse she has been protected from since birth.

But on her wedd…

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Yes, I know.

I had to. I couldn’t resist.

It’s only the middle of June and in the span of maybe just two weeks, the book world has been rocked by:

• Allie Rose Co. attempting (and failing) to trademark the commonly used phrase, “Hot Girls Read”, after …

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While doomscrolling on Threads for some author/bookish hot topics, I came across a great question asked by someone in the market for a new laptop:

“Is productivity better from paying $2000 for a Mac instead of a $500 PC?”

(Or something super close to that; I’m paraphrasing.)

In the comments of that thread popped up another brilliant question that had me wr…

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Be cool.

Just…be cool.

Do not. In any way. Freak out.

Silently chanting this in her head was easier; it became a mantra that kept her calm enough to graciously accept the water offered by the office receptionist and take a seat on the luxurious couch by the window.

Which was basically the entire wall of this gigantic lounge.

Of course Cade Devoy attended meetings—or held them, whichever this may be—in skyscrapers filled with opulence and dripping with wealth. Even the velour of the couch felt like money and prestige, too posh for Elena’s broke ass to perch upon.

But perch she did, because it helped her hide from the receptionist’s questioning gaze.

It came at absolutely no surprise when every woman who laid eyes on Cade quickly did a double-take, flashed sweet smiles, batted flirtatious lashes, and practically purred their offers of assistance if he so happened to glance in their direction. Shoot, even the male guard down at the main lobby seemed interested in him, what with the winking and the grinning.

Again, everyone from the guard to the lady behind the marble desk Elena tried not to stare at exuded prestige. Status. The ability to afford apartments with actual bedrooms.

One day…

Elena scoffed at herself. Not even “one day”. The life of a successful artist, the life she aspired for, would be filled with splattered paint and reinvestments of sold pieces into more paint, more supplies, renting a larger studio…while probably still keeping her old one for some place to sleep and not smell turpentine.

She glanced out the glass wall to admire the crystal-clear view of the city.

Okay.

Maybe she’d swing for a studio with a much better view than Mrs. Garbinson’s back alley dumpsters.

Elena picked up her phone to check her student account for the fiftieth time since Cade told her to wait here. And, for the fiftieth time, the same PAID IN FULL notification in bold green font sat next to her zeroed-out account balance.

How was this possible? Didn’t it say she still owed money last week?

That wasn’t including the tips from last night, which she’d quickly and discreetly counted in a reception restroom stall after Cade greeted his hosts and left with them.

$3,500.

How?!

So between that, the weird scholarship Cade somehow managed to wrangle for her at the drop of a hat, and being surrounded by nothing but luxuries of the upper echelon?

Yeah. Elena needed a mantra to not start hyperventilating into a paper bag.

Especially with the strange dreams from the night before that still tugged at the corners of her memory. Nothing she could truly put her finger on, but there was something that echoed and flashed and made every other little thing feel more intense than it probably would have if she wasn’t losing her mind.

Deep laughter rumbled down the hall from an opening door. An older man in a linen suit stepped out, followed by Cade and another man she also didn’t recognize. Between the three, Cade appeared the most casual in a classic linen suit fitted for the pier as much as the office—and yet, somehow, he still managed to evoke an air of power superseding the other two. Maybe it was how he towered by a good few inches over them. Maybe it was how he didn’t join their laughter, just simply nodded and quirked a small smile for effort.

When his silver eyes locked on hers, Elena felt her face instantly heat and she returned to the solitaire app on her phone.

“Well, it’s like I said, Devoy.” The first man walked sideways so he could continue talking to Cade while leading them to the reception lounge. “We have three other interested buyers and we’re going to need a lot more collateral to even begin considering your offer.”

“Which is so strange, considering how everything was set to sign a week ago. On cash.” Cade’s smile remained calm and cool, but the warning in his gaze shifted silver to steel. “It’s like these buyers popped out of nowhere.”

“One we had already spoken with about a year ago, but they rescinded their offer until they were able to regain some capital. The other, well…” The man shrugged and chuckled again. “What can I say? The market can be a real bitch sometimes.”

Cade’s brow lifted ever so slightly. “Yes. Yes, it can.” He turned to Elena and held out his hand, which she took as a cue to play along. “Gentlemen, allow me to introduce you to Elena Martín, my new artist-in-residence.”

The second man scoffed. “For a second there, I thought you were going to say she’s your new girlfriend!”

“And if she is?”

Elena subtly cleared her throat so she didn’t choke on her own spit. What.

“Artist, huh?” The first man winked at her, then nodded at a large oil painting hanging on the wall next to them. “You must be familiar with Vermeer.”

She smiled and decided indulging his good intentions would be the best option. Pretend like you belong here. “Yes, he’s a classic. It’s a great replica.”

The man’s smile tilted. “Oh, no,” he scoffed, “this is an original. Curated from Sotheby’s and acquired for over thirty million.”

Now Elena did openly choke on her spit, right before she covered her mouth and feigned a cough. “Wow. What a…” She glanced up at Cade, who’d slipped his arm around her waist and now signaled with a press of his fingers that this was their cue to leave. “What a steal!” She finished with a bright laugh. “Lovely to meet you.”

They nodded, muttered their agreements and obligatory farewells, and watched her leave with Cade Devoy, who did not pause to speak with anyone else regardless if they tried.

Whether he figured this would be the short meeting he expected, or he texted his driver to start the car by the time they reached the front doors, Elena was still surprised—and impressed—to see said car waiting for them right on time. The driver slid out, opened the back door for them, and Cade ushered her inside before joining her.

Only once the door closed and the driver pulled them away did he start talking. “Are you sure? It’s a fake?”

“Yeah.” Elena shifted uncomfortably in her seat. “They didn’t get the signature right. It’s missing the ‘I’.”

He blinked at her. Then snorted a laugh while shaking his head. “I can’t wait to lord this over him. Varriday’s been an insufferable asshole ever since he bought that thing.”

“Varriday?”

“Robert Varriday, CEO of Varridian Enterprises and the current thorn in my side.” He pulled out his phone and began tapping a message. “I’d love nothing more than to knock him down a few pegs. Or down the whole fucking ladder.”

“Then why meet with him?”

“Because he has something I want.”

Elena waited for him to expand further, but Cade was too engrossed in texting whoever-it-was to explain. When it became clear he didn’t plan on filling in that blank, she sighed and watched the city life float by. “So…what did you mean by saying I’m your new ‘artist-in-residence’?”

“That.” Cade hit SEND and tucked his phone back into his jacket pocket. “You’re new. You’re an artist. And you’re living in my residence.”

That made her snort as well. “No, I am not.”

“Yes, actually, you are.”

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“It almost made him laugh, now—that he thought he could kill the good in himself and resurrect it later, that the unending rage inside would burn out once it was no longer needed, that he could turn himself into a monster to kill something monstrous, and not stay that way forever.

In the end, what separates a man from a monster, when he is trying to do r…

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Sunlight streamed through the slats of her studio apartment window, making it impossible for Elena to steal a few more minutes of sleep.

Her head hurt.

Muscles ached.

Nothing alarming made her jump out of bed to check in the mirror, but she still wondered what the actual heck happened the night before? She didn’t even drink that much. Partying and getting smashed wasn’t her scene.

Nightclubs definitely weren’t her scene.

Ugh…

A quick glance to either side of her tiny twin bed confirmed at least one thing: she was home, alone, with no one there. And no evidence of anyone being there, like taking a shower or cooking breakfast.

Something twisted in her heart at the emptiness that should have felt comforting. Was she disappointed that Cade hadn’t stayed?

Wait…how did she get home in the first place?

Elena groaned as she slowly sat up, rubbing her temples until the pressure in her head subsided enough to stand on her feet. Wobbly feet, but functional enough to shuffle to the kitchen. Coffee would be required before she could mentally retrace her steps from last night.

She froze mid-step.

When did she change into her sleep shirt?

A fresh wave of dread washed over her as she glanced around the small apartment for signs of a struggle, discarded clothing, anything that would tell her what/who/how this happened. She couldn’t remember leaving The Solarium. She couldn’t remember getting home, or fumbling with her keys, or stripping off her clothes and slipping on the soft shirt that now hung to her knees and cheerfully announced, “Coffee saves lives”.

But there were no kicked pants, or a tossed tunic shirt or even a discarded bra.

Elena grabbed her breasts.

No bra.

A quick shimmy of her hips relieved the worst of her fears—at least she still had panties on.

She was about to grab her phone when someone knocked on her door. Heart suddenly in her throat, she tiptoed to see who it was through the peephole. It didn’t sound like Maintenance’s heavy thumping, or even the super’s…

A silver eye peered back through the hole.

Elena felt her blood pressure instantly skyrocket. But despite her shaky fingers, she managed to open the door. “Hi.”

“Good morning.” Cade thrust a large iced coffee at her and used the momentum to shoulder his way into her apartment. “Glad to see you up and about. I come bearing magic elixir for that headache you undoubtedly have.”

She frowned, but took the coffee. One sip made her instantly forgive him—he knew to make it a mocha. “How did you know?”

“Side effect of attending events at The Solarium without a club membership. The drinks can get a little…tricky.”

“Was I drugged?”

The way he froze in place, just for half a second, gave her a far more honest answer than what came from his mouth. “You were safe.” Cade busied himself by looking around the small studio, flipping open cupboards and poking into her fridge. “We made sure nothing happened to you.”

“Except something did happen to me.” She swept a hand over her body when he frowned at her over the fridge door.

“Ah. That.” He quickly nodded, shut the door, and took a long swig of his own coffee. There was no hiding the way he gave her a deliberate once-over, though. “That was all Seka. Lady to lady, because I am a gentleman.”

Elena narrowed her eyes. “Why do I only believe half of that?”

“Because it’s half true.” He plucked a book from her floating bookshelf and flipped it open—then bit back a chuckle when she snatched the obvious diary from his fingers and stuffed it under her pillow. “I’m hardly a gentleman.”

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“Where the heck have you been?!”

I knew I was being quiet online—it’s been practically a whole month since my last official post/article/newsletter thin…

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Cade struggled to open his eyes.

They shouldn’t feel so heavy. So impossible. He wasn’t…Shit.

Did he fall asleep?

No. Cade Devoy never did that. He would never fall asleep in his own nightclub, especially not when hosting one of those functions that required constant diligence to corral the bullfuckery fae orgies tended to create.

Sure enough, the real event was well underway by the time he was able to pry his eyelids open and blink back the blur. His private booth kept him at a safe distance from the writhing mass of moaning, sweating bodies, but he could still see them and they could see him.

“Welcome back,” purred the woman nestled in his arms.

He blinked at her. He expected to see his fiery artist but instead was met with someone completely different. “Who the fuck are you?”

She stretched her arm around him in a feigned yawn and batted her long, iridescent lashes at him. “Mariana, remember? Ryla said you requested me.”

He did. Just not for this. “Alright, get up.” He resisted the urge to throw her off despite the fact that her touch made him feel nauseous. He may have been ruthless, but he wasn’t an asshole. Not completely.

“What’s wrong?” Mariana straightened but didn’t bother to move out of the booth. Or out of his way. “Need me to grab you another drink?”

Cade peered at the empty glasses on the table. There were only two—one for him, and one for Elena.

He didn’t drink enough to feel this inebriated.

“Get out.” Now he did nudge her harder so she’d get the message. “Move.”

Mariana pouted but obeyed, even though she took her sweet time doing it. When she finally slid out of the way, he shoved past her and headed straight for the bar. Or at least he tried to.

The room went kind of…diagonal.

His mind scrambled for the most plausible explanation, which only worsened his balance. No one would dare spike his drink, of that much he was certain. To do so was not only wildly immature and stupid, it created an immediate death sentence for whoever came up with the idea. An even slower, more painful execution for the one who slipped the potion into his cocktail. Everyone knew this.

He blinked a few times. His sight kept blurring. Finally, he managed to slam his hands against the counter and braced himself before he tripped over one of the stools. “Water. Now.”

Someone thrust an ice cold can of water into his outstretched hand, opened and ready for him to chug. Which he did. Whatever this was, he needed to flush his system so he could go hunt down whoever did this to him.

“You don’t look so good.” The bartender peered at Cade. “You feeling okay?”

“No,” he croaked back. Chugged more water. Slammed the can down. “Who mixed my drink?”

The bartender paled at his glare and took a half-step back. “I did. Exactly as you ordered it.”

Cade trusted him. He’d been employed with the organization for years and never once gave anyone reason to doubt him for anything. And, like a wise person should, he valued his life. “Who gave you my order?”

“Ryla. A MoonBeam for you, and a Special Milky Way for the human.”

Fuck.

Cade sucked down the last of the water and pointed the empty can at him. “Grab her. Put her in lockdown. Tell Seka we’ll deal with her later, but she is not allowed to leave this building. Understood?”

He gave his boss one firm nod and quickly darted away to take care of it. No questions asked.

Cade ignored the outstretched arms and moaning pleas for him to join the orgy, focused instead on finding Elena. She was nowhere to be found, not in his booth nor among the writhing mass of hungry mouths and gyrating limbs. If it were anyone else, he wouldn’t care—but this was his nightclub and his responsibility. Elena Martín was supposed to be under his protection simply by association.

She was supposed to be in his arms, asleep or awake.

If you hadn’t left her before…

He shook off the nagging sense that this could have been prevented. No. He made the right call the first time, when he decided it was best for her safety—and his sanity—to keep her as far away from him and his life as possible. As humanly possible, so the phrase went.

Wasn’t this moment proof that he was right?

Vic met him at the top of the stairs. He’d never been one for Midsummer orgies, so he was still fully clothed and on duty. “She left,” he said before Cade could take the first step down to the lounge.

Several curses he hadn’t uttered in eons flew from his mouth before it snapped shut in a tight grimace.

“Grab your coat.” Cade glanced around the room for Seka, but his head began to spin again and focusing hurt more than giving up. He winced and motioned for Vic to follow him. “Let’s go.”

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I want to be his.

She wanted to be responsible.

I want to be his.

She wanted to slap him hard across the face and yell at him for pulling one over her and then having the absolute balls to even think he could flirt and fondle his way out of it.

I want to be his.

Elena didn’t know what the heck she wanted.

Except a drink. Dios mio, did she need a drink.

“All done!”

The announcement blurted from his mouth out of freaking nowhere. He plopped the brush back into the bowl, leaned back into the couch, and spread his arms again like before. “What do you think?” Cade asked with a broad grin.

I think you just gave me whiplash.

She glanced down at her chest. It was covered in streaks and swirls of gold, with a few patterns mimicking the tattoos on his neck. “It’s…beautiful!” She breathed a laugh. “It’s actually really beautiful!”

He chuckled. Such a completely different sound coming from him and Elena almost—almost—forgot the part where she needed to keep him at arm’s length. “Don’t sound so surprised.”

A new kind of heat bloomed in her cheeks. “I didn’t mean…I mean, ah…”

“I need to return upstairs.” Again, his lane change was abrupt and unexpected. At least he had the decency to help her off his lap and back onto her feet like a gentleman. “Thanks for the glitter job.”

“That’s it?”

Cade turned his head to look at her. Like he was waiting for her to lob the exact barrage of accusations and insults she’d been rehearsing for weeks. But when Elena simply stared at him, mouth parted yet unmoving, his own mouth twisted into that irritating, self-assured smirk.

“Plan on packing up and joining us for a few drinks?” He moved into her space again. Far too close. Way too intimate. When his fingers wrapped around hers, he lifted them to his lips. Pressed a soft kiss. “We have a lot to catch up on.”

Elena melted.

“I, ah…” She cleared her throat and quickly shook her head. “I’m sorry. I’ve still gotta work this gig. I mean, help Seka and all. Thanks, though.”

“Thanks”?! That’s the best you got??

“Pity.” He lowered her fingers but didn’t let go of her hand. “Well, when you change your mind, come find me.”

A thousand arguments and reproaches floated through her head, starting with how that should be a massive “if” and not a “when”, but they all dissolved when he brushed another kiss to the back of her hand.

Then abruptly turned and left.

Elena just stood there. Wondered if anyone would notice if she just collapsed right there and stared at the ceiling for a few hours. Because that sounded like a wonderful idea.

She was still standing there in complete bewilderment when Vic returned. “Elena? Everything all right?”

He must have seen the way her face instantly flushed. Eyes wide. Legs wobbly. Her cheeks burned hotter when she shook her head, then quickly corrected it with a nod. She didn’t know how to answer that. “Everything’s great! I’m ready for whoever’s next.” On a second thought, she realized how rushed and rude she must have sounded. “How was your break?”

Vic’s brow pinched the tiniest of measures, but he didn’t call her out on her bullshit. “It was good. Party’s really kicking off.” He glanced at the table covered with her supplies. “Did you want to go up for a while? Get a few drinks?”

“Nah, I should stay here.” She waved a hand to dismiss the temptation. Even though a drink sounded like exactly what she needed. “Got a job to do.”

After a beat, he smiled. “Boss says you’re done for the night.”

She froze. Did he mean Seka? Or was this from Cade, who would absolutely pull some invisible string like this to get what he wanted?

Crap. Was she just canoodling with one of Seka’s guests while the security cameras watched?

Elena’s blood chilled and she quickly started counting all the money she was definitely about to lose because she couldn’t keep her own hormones in check. “Are you sure? Is she sure? Seka wants me to leave?”

“Oh! No, nothing like that.” Vic’s smile brightened and he walked over to help her pack up her things. “In fact, I hear your paycheck’s been doubled. Boss says everyone has absolutely loved you and the turnaround for the charity portion is way more than expected. You’re welcome to stay as long as you’d like.”

She nearly wheezed when she hear the word “doubled”. There were a few bills she’d been neglecting that this gig just officially covered, and she wasn’t even done counting her tips.

Maybe she wouldn’t need to remind Cade about his promise after all.

Well…not right away, at least. Tuition didn’t pay itself, but at least the past due phone bill would get caught up.

“I could use a drink,” she quietly admitted, more to herself than to Vic.

“Why don’t you go on up? I got this.” He gently nudged her aside and started zipping up her brush bag. “Besides, the drinks are on the house tonight. Open bar, no limits, full security. And just let me know if you need me to call you a ride for home, you got that?”

She liked Vic. He seemed like good people—paternal, in a way. Like an uncle or older brother. She definitely don’t miss the protective hint in his voice. “Thanks, Vic. Really. I won’t be up there long.”

He scoffed like he didn’t believe her. Glanced down at the sparkling symbols on her neck. “Take your time.”

Downstairs was a quiet space to relax, rejuvenate, and relieve oneself of everything going on upstairs.

Upstairs was a whole other realm.

A sea of jumping, gyrating, grinding bodies covered in sweat and glitter made up the whole dance floor from one wall to the next. The music felt more like a full-body vibration than actual song, pulsating with every heartbeat and pushing the sea into tidal waves of laughter and moans.

Elena had never been to a charity event like this before.

Of course the bar needed to be located on the completely opposite side of the room. No way to get around the dance floor, and no other beverage options were to be found no matter how hard she looked or how high she tried to hop to see over the mass of heads and shoulders blocking her view.

She did, however, spot the display tables of information she expected at a more…she would say, “normal” function. There were a few cardboard cutouts and trifold brochures propped up on folding tables, most of them featuring the smiling face of a woman hugging a small child.

Must be the people they’re feeding. Or housing. To be honest, she forgot what the charitable cause was for.

Elena began to shoulder her way through the dancers, doing her best not to get caught up in their attempts to pull her into the fray. She recognized many of the faces that turned to smile and grin at her, some with genuine happiness while others eyed her with desire. And hunger. And glints of things that made her want to get through a lot faster.

The crowd started squeezing around her.

Pushing.

Pulsing.

Groping.

I don’t want this.

A man sneered at her, winking above a perfect set of white teeth that seemed almost too sharp when they glinted in the disco light. He reached for her, holding out his hand for her to take, but she felt herself get nudged and wedged deeper into the mass.

I don’t want to be here.

Alcohol on a woman’s breath fanned across her cheek and traveled to her neck, the woman herself giggling and moaning an invitation to “join us” as she tried to slip her fingers through Elena’s.

I don’t—

Silver eyes meet hers.

They instantly sharpened with awareness, set above a familiar jaw that tensed and ticked as he started to shove his way through. He was all the way across the floor but seemingly determined to get to her, moving and pushing people out of his way.

“Glitter Girl!”

One of the guys who’d come downstairs with his girlfriend cut in front of Elena, a drunken grin plastered on his bronzed face. “You joined us! Excellent! Can I get you a drink? Or do you,” he lowered his voice into a lusty growl as his hands wrapped around her waist, “want to dance?”

Panic lanced through her. She didn’t want to dance. She didn’t want his hands on her. “I just want a drink, thanks.”

“Aw, come on. You’re so beautiful!”

“Thanks,” she tried to laugh as she edged away from his tightening grasp. “But I’m just really thirsty—”

“I’ve got something you can drink.” He pressed up behind her at the same time he pulled her hard against him. “Shall we go back downstairs?”

She turned hard to wrench herself free.

And that’s when she saw a hand clamp down on his shoulder.

“Dominic.” Cade yanked hard to make her unwanted dance partner spin around and face him. “Are you blind? Or just unable to fucking read?”

Dominic chuckled, but Elena could tell he wasn’t as confident as he appeared five seconds ago. “The hell are you talking about?”

“Look again, dumbass.”

He did. More at her neck and collarbone than anywhere else. He squinted and leaned in closer, but only as close at that vice grip would allow. And then he swallowed hard. “I-I’m sorry, man. I couldn’t see in all this light.”

The arched brow told both of them that Cade wasn’t buying it. “Now you can. Back off. Go find your woman. Or should I let her know what you’re up to?”

Dominic vanished into the crowd. It was almost impressive how quickly he disappeared.

Elena’s pseudo-savior grabbed her hand tight. “Don’t let go,” he said loud enough in her ear for her to hear over the music. “And don’t take anything anyone gives you.”

“Including you?”

He glared at her. Then that impish grin broke across his handsome face. “We’ll see,” was his cryptic reply.

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